THE owners of Derham’s Removals in Chard have issued their heartfelt thanks to the emergency services and members of the community after their business was gutted by a raging fire on Thursday.

Barbara Derham told The News that the support of local people had taken their breath away as they picked through the bones of what remained of their longstanding family business.

The fire broke out on Thursday at about 8pm while owner Colin Derham was still in the building.

It did not take long for the flames to turn into a “whirlwind”

of fire and Mr Derham tried himself to mitigate the damage while the emergency services rushed to the scene.

Fire engines from eight towns attended the incident in East Street, including Chard, Crewkerne, Axminster, Wiveliscombe, Colyton, Yeovil, Wellington and Honiton.

Firefighters worked through the night to tackle the blaze and nearby residents were evacuated from their homes.

Mrs Derham said: “I cannot put into words how grateful we are to the fire brigade and the great job they did, it was amazing.

“Nobody has complained, nobody has given us a hard time, everyone has just been fantastic.

“I got a call to say that the building had gone up as my husband was still in there. He was in the office carrying out the routine checks he does daily on all the storage and then sits down for a bit to read the newspaper.

“All the lights went out, so he found his torch and headed for the fuse box to see what has gone wrong. He saw the flames and it was clear it had come from a radiator which had melted the wheels it was on and toppled on to some furniture – it was absolutely accidental and the investigations have confirmed that.

“He grabbed the radiator and rushed outside with it, which burnt his hands, but it was too late and a whirlwind of fire was blowing.

“The office has totally gone, the main building has gone and there is a smaller building that has gone too, thankfully the neighbouring houses were untouched – it could have been much worse.

“The people who had items stored with us have been wonderful – we have even had people calling from Portugal with messages of support, our customers have been brilliant.

“It is still sinking in really, we are gutted and we have hardly had any sleep since.”

The family firm which started in the same location in Chard more than 25 years ago hopes to carry out its removals the best it can and has been helped in the meantime by UK Storage to get back on its feet.