FIRE crews are investigating the cause of a fire at Hapton's Blythe's chemical factory.

Firefighters wearing special breathing apparatus battled for over two hours to bring a blaze at a chemical plant at William Blythes, Hapton, under control.

The cause of the blaze at the Manchester Road site is still not known. Four fire engines from Burnley and Padiham were called to the fire in one of the plant's mixing houses at 12.50pm yesterday.

Chemicals from that area of the fertiliser factory had been removed as repair work was being carried out. Lagging around some of the piping caught fire and spread quickly to the roof of the building.

Fire Station Officer at Burnley Peter Latham said: "Because of the repair work taking place they had drained all chemicals, so there was no real problem to the surrounding area.

"The damage was quite extensive as the building is quite flimsy. We used breathing apparatus as a matter of course as pipe lagging can be quite dusty and there can be a lot of dust in the roofs of buildings.

"In the end it was quite a simple fire, because the chemicals had been removed. It was just a matter of pointing a hose at it."

Officer Latham also praised the staff at the plant who, he said, helped the firefighters in dealing with the emergency.

"Staff did everything correctly. They had chemists and safety representatives to meet us and they knew everything that was going on and gave us all the information that was needed.