PRODUCTION at a busy mill has had to be suspended today after a blaze caused more than £500,000 worth of damage to machinery.

Traffic from Blackburn and Rossendale was disrupted when firefighters closed part of busy Grane Road for six hours so they could tackle the blaze on Saturday afternoon.

Bosses at the 151-year-old JH Birtwistle's textile mill in Haslingden, surveyed the damage after firefighters cleared the large room of smoke and reluctantly agreed production would have to be suspended.

The fire started at 1.30pm on Saturday in the large weaving shed when about 14 workers were in the room which houses 90 looms. Nobody was injured.

Because of the fabrics being woven, the blaze spread quickly and when firefighters arrived the 40metre by 65metre room, part of which is two storey, was full of thick black smoke.

The cause of the blaze is still being investigated but the fire destroyed 16 of the 90 looms inside the shed at a cost of £35,000 each.

At its height 60 firefighters were at the scene after the initial five crews called were increased to eight. The aerial ladder platform from Burnley was used to monitor the roof in case the fire broke through.

A crew was still on scene on Sunday to make sure none of the fabric re-ignited.

General manager Sean Clayton said: "JH Birtwistle's is part of the John Lewis Partnership and the mill works 24 hours a day from 6am on a Monday to 6pm on a Saturday.

"We weave furnishing fabrics which are then sold on to manufacturers and we do a little bit of export but most of the business is in the UK.

"The finished cloths are used for bed sheets, curtains and furnishing coverings. We are very busy so we have to get back into production as soon as possible and everyone will be pulling together.

"The fire brigade acted very quickly and everyone got out safely." The factory employs 147 people but although there is a sprinkler system in the rest of the mill there is not one inside the weaving shed. Mr Clayton said he did not know why the system was not also inside the weaving section.

Fire crews in teams of eight wearing breathing equipment went into the building on a relay basis to tackle the fire.

Area Commander Pete Aspden said: "The difficulty we had was it was a well developed fire in a room which was virtually smoke logged and it was difficult to establish how many fires there were and what outlets there were from that room into the rest of the building.

"This type of cotton is a mixture of cotton and plastics which burn well."

He said once the visible fires were put out the room was vented using fans to clear the smoke but it was a slow process and a constant check had to be made in case fires re-ignited.

In May 1997 a spark from machinery set light to a dust extractor at the factory damaging an outside walkway, a corridor and part of the roof. Four months later a second fire damaged the roof.