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20 firefighters battle major blaze near Merry Hill shopping centre

Twenty firefighters battled a 'severe' fire in Dudley on Saturday that saw part of a timber's merchants go up in smoke.

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Crews were called to the blaze at around 3.15pm after members of the public spotted smoke coming from Woodstock Timber Supplies Ltd in Old Bush St, Brierley Hill.

Plumes of smoke were spotted from shoppers at the nearby Merry Hill shopping centre.

West Midlands Fire service deployed three fire appliances following the emergency calls, and asked for a further appliance to be deployed when they arrived at the scene.

Two hose reels of water were used to put out the blaze, which crews were still tackling an hour later.

Owner of Woodstock Timer Supplies, Dave Oakley, of Smestow, has been in business at the site for 27 years.

He said: "In all my time here we've never had anything like this happen.

"I don't know how much stock we've lost, but I'm just grateful to the guys here for coming out so quickly.

"It could have been a lot worse if these crews hadn't been here so fast, especially with the wind picking up how it has."

Mr Oakley reassured customers that the fire had only caused slight damage and said the business was open as usual.

"The business is still operating as normal, open for business as usual and customers will still get their orders," he said.

"It looked a lot worse than it was, the first impression didn't really do justice to it.

"The fire only affected a very small part of the yard, with only slight damage to one of the buildings.

"Fire crews have said that they are not treating it as suspicious."

Other business owners were also present at the scene as fire crews changed shift and worked on 'dampening down' the smouldering remnants.

Janet Homer, aged 61, who owns Audam Motors was pleased to find out that the fire hadn't affected them despite taking place directly behind their unit.

She said: "The fire fighters did their infra-red checks on the unit to make sure there weren't any hotspots before letting us back in.

"A few years ago we had a car explode on us but that wasn't as severe as this. I'm just glad everyone is okay."

Crew Commander Mark Harris confirmed that the two crews would remain overnight to ensure no further fires ensued and that the owner was working with investigators to try and determine the cause.

Reporter Jessica Labhart was at the scene:

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