Andover Ocado warehouse blaze cost fire service £132k

Fighting the blaze which ripped through the Ocado warehouse cost the fire service £132,000.

The fire on 5 February, which burned for four days, completely destroyed the building in Andover, Hampshire.

A Freedom of Information (FOI) request to Hampshire Fire and Rescue Service revealed response costs were £57,000, with lost or damaged equipment costing £75,000.

It said it had not sought to recover the costs from Ocado or its insurers.

The fire service said it was yet to work out how much could be recovered through insurance.

A review costing £164,000 to look at the causes and development of the fire was also commissioned and funded by the Hampshire Fire and Rescue Authority.

The fire completely destroyed the Ocado warehouse

The replacement costs of over 180 items, which were either lost or damaged in the fire, included five ladders totalling £17,178, a "snake eye" camera costing £4,500 and £8,358 for 69 delivery hoses.

Two kettles costing £40, four axes costing £41 each and £33 worth of hand lamps were among the smaller equipment items that needing replacing after the fire.

In total 108 vehicles from five counties - Hampshire, Dorset, Oxfordshire, Berkshire, Hertfordshire - were brought in to fight the blaze over the four days.

The fire service said it was the first fire in the UK involving a building of this nature.

The distribution centre fire in Andover lasted for four days

Assistant chief officer Shantha Dickinson said: "Due to the challenging situations we work in there will be occasions where fire equipment is damaged.

"In this situation [we] passed the details on to our mutual protection provider, an alternative to insurance used by many public sector organisations, which will manage the claim and any related issues.

"Our focus during the incident was putting the fire out and the safe evacuation of residents, and is now to ensure we use our learning to help educate the sector."

A Hampshire Fire and Rescue Authority report revealed the fire was so well progressed the only outcome was the building burning to the ground.

The report found "given the contributory factors to fire growth and development, despite the array of firefighting media and resource utilised in tackling the fire, the outcome could not have been any different than a total loss of the building".

A previous report found the fire spread because a detection system failed and staff turned off the sprinklers.

• 'Sprinklers turned off' in Ocado warehouse fire

• Ocado says warehouse fire cost more than £100m

• Electrical fault sparked huge Ocado fire

Ocado said it would rebuild the facility, and in July it said the fire had cost it £100m.

Investigators said it was caused by an electrical fault in a battery charging unit which caused a plastic lid on top of a grocery-carrying robot to catch light.

The distribution warehouse, which spanned 18 acres (784,080 sq ft), contained over 1,000 robots picking customer shopping ordered online.

The fire created a plume of smoke visible for miles around