Large fire burns down Poolside Sale Heating & Leisure on Foster St, Sale

A family owned business went up in flames in east Gippsland, leaving a community reeling. Read what happened.

Multiple Gippsland businesses have been affected after a large fire in the early hours of Saturday morning. Emergency services were called to the scene on Foster St, just off the Princes Hwy in Sale about 12.30am on Saturday.

Firefighters were on scene until about 5.30am.

About 14 trucks from CFA and FRV were on scene to extinguish the large fire that completely destroyed Poolside Sale Heating & Leisure.

Ambulance Victoria was not required and there were no injuries reported.

Police and CFA trucks from Traralgon East, Sale and Maffra were back on scene later on Saturday morning to continue working on the fire.

A police spokesperson said police were investigating the circumstances surrounding the fire.

The cause was confirmed to be an electrical fault and is being treated as non-suspicious.

Another nearby business — a solar energy company called Rocky’s Solar — had their Sale office destroyed.

Rocky's Solar lost their Sale office as a result from the large blaze. Picture: Facebook

A Rocky’s Solar employee, who asked to stay anonymous, said business went ahead “as usual” for them despite their offices being destroyed by the fire and will work out of their other office in Cowwarr.

Dahlsens Gippsland regional manager Bryan Froud said he was thankful for the efforts for all the firefighters who worked hard to contain the fire.

“We’ve been certainly impacted to a small degree where we’re fortunate most of the damage that occurred for us is some water damage and our main office area in our building is out of action — just through both the fire and the water that was used to put it out,” Mr Froud said.

“We’re setting up the ability to operate temporary offices or temporary communications and what not at the moment.

“We should hopefully be up and running within reason by this week — we’re thankful we didn’t lose our property and feeling for our neighbours who have lost their buildings and their stock and everything else so it’s a lot harder for them.”

Mr Froud said their branch manager and assistant manager worked over the weekend to clean up and get electricians in to assess the damage.

“We’ve been able to respond fairly quickly and hopefully customers won’t be impacted too much,” he said.

“Our team are all good — they’re all pitching in and getting the job done.”

Mr Froud said the worst thing is fearing for the fact that you “lose everything”.

“You just hope that no lives or no one has been impacted or hurt in anyway — when I heard the buildings at the front had burnt I was fearing the worst because the building we operate out of — we don’t own it we lease it — but it’s a timber clad building and doesn’t have any fire sprinklers or anything through it,” he said.

“The worst case scenario is you’d assume it would’ve gone up as well — so it was just amazing the fire brigade were able to prevent it from transferring into our building so it was a bit of shock I suppose in that regard.”

He said the adjoining wall of between Dahlsens and Poolside is “compromised”.

“We’re not fully secured and weather proofed at this point in time so we’re exposed to some weather and water penetration until such time the building in front can be demolished and a secure wall can be put in place,” he said.

“Our main office is right at the front as well and the fire brigade helped to extinguish the fire — they came in with hoses and cut through the wall to try and get water in on the fire so all of our computers, phones and printers and all the stuff we use to run the business has been impacted.

“But we’re fortunate we have another site in Sale we’ve been able to relocate our admin team to so we can continue to answer phone calls and respond to emails and do all that stuff remotely.

“All of our machinery that we use to produce our roofing material it’s all been able to start up and operate so we’re all good to go with that.

“There will be a little bit of inconvenience while things get refurbished and replaced and a bit of building and work to secure the side that’s damaged but we can pretty well do that without impacting our operations day-to-day so we’re lucky.”

Limited items were able to be retrieved from the building fire, with the only known object being a metal safe that was taken on the back of a ute. Picture: Jack Colantuono

FRV district 10 Sale headquarters commander Ian Burns said local fire brigades did a great job putting out the blaze and saving Dahlsens from catching fire.

He said very limited items were able to be retrieved from the Poolside building, with the only known object being a metal safe.

“As you can see there’s been a substantial, significant and intense fire that’s gone through the whole building — at this point it’s a total loss,” he said.

“In the building they’ve still got some areas of high fuel loads — some barbecue beads and coal that associate with heaters so they’re creating some hot spots that they’re dealing with now.

“We’ve got the complete operations and have secured the area.”

He said the fire was under control in about three hours and it was then a matter of extinguishing and maintaining safety on scene.

“We’ve gone into overhaul and salvage up to this point and securing the area for investigations to begin,” he said.

Fire Rescue Victoria Sale commander Ian Burns said the building was a "total loss". Picture: Jack Colantuono

“The first crews got here about 12.30am and we were quickly supported by neighbouring brigades and FRV from Traralgon with their aerial ladder which was vital to protect the adjoining building.

“They’ve all worked really well together to what we call a good outcome seeing as we didn’t lose any more buildings — so it was a great collaborative effort from both CFA and FRV crews.”

He said it was lucky no other buildings were impacted.

“Crews were able to cut that off and the neighbouring buildings were quite safe and we had protection lines in place to protect people when the fire was at its most intense,” he added.

A CFA firefighter on scene said the fire was so “bright” and the team could feel the heat from a great distance away.

Police monitored traffic coming into Sale over the weekend.

Poolside Heating and Leisure have been contacted for comment.

Anyone who witnessed the fire or has more information is urged to contact the Sale Police Station on [phone].