By Ellie-Louise Style
20 Firefighters were called to tackle the blaze shortly after midnight today.
Two members of staff who were working at the New Street Lidl store in Ashford first discovered the store was on fire. Shortly after they evacuated the one-storey building, before calling the fire brigade.
Firefighters managed to reach the burning building within 5 minutes of the call. They then used a thermal imaging camera (TIC) to carry out a scan of the building so they were able to locate where the fire was, as it shows you the hot areas on a screen.
The breathing apparatus team discovered that the fire was located in the back storeroom, and believed that it had originally started in a freezer, which had then spread to the other stock.
Therefore there was nothing suspicious about the fire.
It took the firefighters over 2 hours to completely clear the scene, and the team had to use three positive pressure ventilation fans to clear the smoke and to make sure if was completely safe again.