Pleasington Crematorium suffers fire damage
One cremation service scheduled for later that day had to be cancelled, while another five services on Friday were also put on hold
A fire broke out at Pleasington Crematorium last week (Thursday 8 June) at around 11.20am, according to updates from Blackburn and Darwen Council, which the fire service attended “swiftly” and were on site for almost four hours.
At the time of the fire, a service was taking place, which had to be halted and the family evacuated. The funeral directors for the service also took the deceased back to the funeral home.
The council have stated that they were “very grateful for the family of the deceased for their understanding”, and that they will reimburse their cremation service costs, as well as speak to them about further compensation.
Due to the fire, one cremation service scheduled for later that day had to be cancelled, while another five services on Friday were also put on hold.
All services scheduled for the week commencing 12 June have also been cancelled via funeral directors.
The fire is known to have started in or around an outdoor storage compound next to the cremation room, which houses the two cremator machines.
While the crematorium is still awaiting the fire inspection officer’s report for more concrete information, neither of the cremator machines were switched on at the time the fire started.
Following the fire, two rooms within the crematorium building – the plant room and the chapel itself – only have smoke damage.
In addition, manufacturers of the cremator machinery attended the site on the evening of Thursday 8 June and again on Friday 9 June to inspect the damage, who think that both machines can be repaired.
Other works are needed also, such as a complete refurbishment of the cremation room, and extensive cleaning work to curtains and carpets in the chapel.
Any burials already scheduled are unaffected and can go ahead as planned.
Martin Eden, strategic director of environment and operations at the council, said: “Unfortunately a service was taking place as the fire alarm was raised. The family has been absolutely brilliant. They were understandably upset, but very co-operative. We’ve had to cancel all of next week’s cremation services, via local funeral directors.
“We’ve got a great relationship with our funeral directors so they’ve been supporting families and booking cremation facilities in other areas around Blackburn with Darwen. Based on the engineer’s inspections last night and today, I am really hopeful that the cremation service will be back up and running in a matter of weeks, rather than months.”
He added: “We’ll be in contact with our funeral directors and hopefully we’ll be able to give them a date fairly soon as to when we will reopen.”