Rent a Space Brookvale: Self-storage fire cause revealed by Coroner
Frustrated customers of a Brookvale storage facility, who had treasured personal goods destroyed or damaged in last year’s fire, have finally been told what caused the blaze.
Manly
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The cause of the devastating multimillion-dollar fire at the Rent A Space self-storage facility at Brookvale can be revealed.
Deputy NSW Coroner Harriet Grahame found that “it was likely that the fire was accidental and may have had an electrical cause”.
Magistrate Grahame found there was no evidence of arson, no suspicious circumstances and “no evidence the fire was naturally caused”.
She also found that there was no need to hold a coronial inquest into last year’s blaze because she was “satisfied that an extensive investigation has been carried out and that a Fire Inquiry was unlikely to take this matter any further”.
There had been rumours swirling on social media that an illegal drugs’ lab was operating in one of the storage lockers, but that was quashed by police in the days after the fire which started on March 28.
More than 550 customers had treasured household goods and business items stored in the Cross St complex.
News of the Coroner’s decision comes as it emerges that five customers are taking civil action against the company that operates the complex.
They are trying, through Manly Local Court, to recoup losses of up to $120,000.
The fire destroyed the main building, containing 290 lockers, at the complex. About 260 lockers were accommodated in three other buildings that were not impacted directly by fire, but the contents of many were damaged by heat, smoke and water.
Some customers had concerns that there stored items were not impacted by the fire, but they were not able to recover them unless they paid a hefty contamination clean-up fee.
A copy of a Fire Investigation Report, handed to the Coroner by NSW Fire and Rescue, said it could not pinpoint the cause of the blaze but did suggest the fire’s “area of origin” was in a locker used by a northern beaches business to store items such as solar powered torches and phones.
There was also a desk with a computer and a printer as well as a power to outlet to charge batteries, the report said. It also said there was a large amount of electrical cabling in the locker.
The report said the locker was on the ground floor in the northwest corner of the main building on the complex.
It said that the “classification of fire cause” was “undetermined” because a “point of origin was not established” and “an ignition source could not be identified”.
The report did say however that: “A hypothesis that the classification for this fire is accidental is possible.
“There were electrical devices in the smaller area of origin that could be the ignition source, but this could not be confirmed.”
A spokesman for Rent A Space said today: “We welcome the Coroner’s finding.”