Why this week's huge Wolverhampton factory fire has echoes of the Carvers disaster in 2012
Henry Carver was sat at his desk when his secretary burst though the door.
"It's not another practice, it's for real," she said breathlessly. If this sounds like a scene from a Hollywood disaster movie, it looked like one too. But it was very, very real.
This week's huge factory fire in the Blakenhall area of Wolverhampton brings back memories of the disastrous 2012 fire at Carvers Building Supplies in the city.
In one of the biggest fires the city had ever seen, the Carvers fire saw the sky engulfed with huge plumes of pitch-black smoke, 20ft flames shooting through the roof, and the sound of exploding gas cylinders ringing out like gunfire.
Workers stood by in tears as their workplace, along with parked cars, was engulfed in a ball of fire.
Traffic ground to a standstill. Hundreds of people were evacuated from their homes, schools or university accommodation. The railway station was closed and all trains were diverted away from the city.
Mr Carver fought back the tears as he told his workforce to go home. He had been last to leave the building after checking everyone was out.
And within a couple of hours, a family business which had taken 116 years to build was destroyed. The vast two-acre warehouse just off the Wolverhampton ring road was totally gutted.
"We can take a little bit of happiness in that no-one has died," Mr Carver said in the aftermath of the fire.
The fire, caused by a faulty boiler which had been recently installed, broke out at about 11.40am on February 29, 2012.
Operations manager Paul Hipkiss, from Bushbury, recalled: "I was in the ops office when the fire started, and after we got everyone out of the building, a colleague tried to put the fire out. I was passing him extinguishers but we realised it was a losing battle."
Timber salesman Matt Lloyd, 26, of Woodcross Street, Coseley, had worked for the company for 10 years.
He said: "At first, we thought the fire brigade would just put the fire out, and then we'd be able to go back to work, but that idea soon went out the window."
Mr Carver recalls looking out from his office window as the fire began to spread. Initially it did not look too severe.
"I could see there was a fire with the boiler, I thought if they can get the fire engines there to put some water on it, then they could put it out," he says.
"It almost seemed to spread at walking pace, which doesn't sound that quick, but it went through 150 metres of building in minutes, not hours."
Mr Carver remembers the nervous wait while firefighters assessed the situation and decided how best to tackle the blaze.
"It seemed like ages - in reality it was probably only about 15 minutes - they decided they were going to contain it, and not stop it. Nobody was trapped inside the building, so it was only danger to property.
"They wanted to make sure it didn't reach the gas tanks."
