THE owners of a hair salon today spoke of their horror at finding the business devastated by an arson attack.

Lyn Smethurst and Andrea Veldon were called to LA's Hair Studio, Lyndhurst Road, Burnley, after fire broke out in the flat above at 10.15pm last night.

Police said they were treating the blaze as suspicious and scenes of crimes of officers were called in.

The owners say the future of the salon was jeopardised after gallons of water poured through from the flat into the shop. Lyn said insurance assessors were due to investigate the damage today, but feared the repair bill could run into thousands of pounds.

She said: "This was a new venture for us, we opened six months ago and had just got the business off its feet. We are devastated.

"We are afraid our customers may not wait until we get the shop ready for reopening but we hope that won't happen because we were just staring to get everything right.

"A lot of hard work was involved in getting the salon just how we wanted it. I don't think we will have to start from scratch but at the moment we can't even switch the lights on in case water has got in the electrics."

Firefighters said they thought someone had used ladders to get on to the roof and into the first floor flat.

The road was closed for two hours while they tackled the blaze. Sub-officer Peter Kelly said four engines turned out to the fire which took two hours to put out.

He added: "When we arrived there was smoke in the front street. We believed someone was inside so four men went in to search. Fire was coming through the sky light window, it was like a blow torch going through the roof.

"It took quite a long time to control the blaze because we had to knock some walls down so we could extinguish all the fires."