Wooden pallets go up in flames

A fire ripped through 150 wooden pallets in a factory yard in Cradley Heath sending flames up 50ft.

The blaze broke out at TSM Pallets in the early hours yesterday with around 30 firefighters called to bring it under control.

The crews successfully managed to prevent the fire spreading and destroying the factory building. Now an investigation is underway into the cause of the blaze, which is being treated as suspicious.

Fire crews were called to the Newlyn Road site at around 1am yesterday to find several 30ft high piles of wooden pallets well alight.

Watch commander Dan Griffiths said: "We were very concerned the factory building, which also contained pallets, would go up, but through the hard work of the crews here we managed to prevent that. It could have been much worse."

Mr Griffiths confirmed they are treating the blaze as suspicious. The owners of TSM Pallets are open for business as usual today, and say they are very grateful to the crews.

One of the directors, who did not want to be named, said: "It could have been much worse. We lost around 150 pallets which were actually scrap and were waiting to be recycled. They stopped it from spreading. We will get started on cleaning it up, and would like to reassure customers we are still open."