Atherstone on Stour Fire Investigation - The Police Enquiry
Speaking outside Stratford on Avon Police Station yesterday, Detective Superintendent Ken Lawrence, the senior investigating officer, gave an update on how the enquiry is progressing.
“We have an obligation to find out what happened, both for the families of the firefighters who died, and as a police investigation."
Det Supt Lawrence explained that the police now had primacy over the site at Atherstone on Stour and a full police investigation was underway and warned that this would not be a short investigation.
He said: ”The Health and Safety Executive are working with us and are an integral part of the inquiry as are the fire investigation team.
“We will be searching the building meticulously, but as can clearly be seen, the building has been severely damaged by the fire. It has been declared unsafe and at present no one is allowed to enter.
“This part of the investigation will take several weeks. There will be a methodical search planned at each stage. We are working closely with building experts and will have to deconstruct the building slowly and carefully piece by piece in order to search the site properly.
“It is not clear how the fire started and we must ensure we treat this as a suspicious fire until we know otherwise.
He added: “Despite the heat of the fire and the damage inside the building, including the collapse of the roof, we are hopeful that we will find the evidence we need to find out how the fire started.
“We are also working through a large number of witnesses from the company, people who were employed at the warehouse, firefighters who were there on Friday night and others who have information, in a bid to try to unravel what happened on Friday night.
“There were large number of immigrant workers at the warehouse, and we are working with interpreters for 11 different nationalities.
Commenting on the size of the investigation he said, “We still have a number of police officers at the scene, although their numbers have been reduced in the past day or so, but we have increased the number working on the investigation. Currently there are around 100 officers working on the investigation, including officers from neighbouring forces.”
Det Supt Lawrence closed by saying, “We will take as much time as we need to complete this investigation. My duty is to give the families an understanding of what happened and to hopefully answer all their questions, and also to provide evidence to the Coroner so we can find out how the firefighters came to die.