The huge fire which ripped through a Colne storage company yesterday wrecked cars, furniture and personal items worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Businesses, families and individuals are waiting to discover how much they have lost in the blaze which devastated Easi-Store4u, in Burnley Road.

The building has been declared structurally unsafe after the roof collapsed and some people have not been able to gain access to inspect their belongings.

Firefighters said a Ferrari stored at the site had been reduced to a shell, together with another car, while £20,000-worth of furniture fabric in another unit had been destroyed.

More than 60 firefighters, using two aerial platforms, tackled the blaze at its height.

Flames of 15 to 20 feet were seen as fire crews arrived at the scene shortly after 3.30am yesterday.

EasiStore4u, which has been running for more than six years, has 26 garage-sized lock-ups for customers as well as a number of larger industrial units.

Around half of the 100m x 500m building was wrecked by the fire and the other half has been left with severe water damage.

Joy Didsbury, from Hurst Green, has been renting a unit at the site for five years.

She said: “I was sitting at the hospital waiting for an appointment when I saw pictures of the fire on the news.

“I just didn’t know what to do. We have been building a new home for five years and in another week we planned to move in and empty the unit.

“We have been storing all our precious household belongings like furniture, pictures and photo albums. We will never be able to replace those.

“I’ve been lucky as I got to see into my unit and so far there seems to be just a lot of water damage.”

Steve Robinson, from Colne, was also storing his furniture in a lock-up.

He said: “We had just started to empty the unit of a few items when this happened. It’s very worrying.”

The fire is believed to have started accidentally, possibly through an electrical fault.

Incident commander Steve Kennedy said: “We had to continue damping down the building for several hours until we are sure it had stopped smouldering.

“We will be looking at CCTV to establish how the fire started, but so far we have no reason to believe it’s anything but accidental."

Burnley Road, one of the main routes through Colne, was closed for more than seven hours while the blaze was tackled and traffic diverted.

Crews also pumped water on the fire from nearby Colne Water because the blaze was so large.

The owner of the storage firm, who did not want to be named, said: “The business is definitely insured.

"I do not want to go into detail about what was inside as not all the owners know about the fire yet.”

He urged any owners he had not yet spoken with to get in touch.

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