Hi °C | Lo °C A historic building in Belfast escaped extensive fire damage last night after fire crews were able to prevent a small fire from turning into an uncontrollable blaze.
Firefighters who were dealing with a different incident in the city centre alerted headquarters to a possible blaze after they noticed a small glow coming from the roof of the Belfast Metropolitan College at around 4.30am.
As they approached the five-storey building they soon noticed it was a small fire and called for back-up.
Group Commander Brian McClintock said because of the quick actions of those firefighters, the service was able to prevent the fire from developing into some more serious.
"Generally speaking the fire was not too big an incident," he said. "It was actually quite a small fire. The only difficulty we had was access because it was on the roof.
"The fact that they spotted it meant we were able to deal with it before it developed into anything worse. If it had of been another 30 minutes it could have been much worse. In my books that's a good save."
He believed the fire, which caused minor damage to two classrooms, was accidental.
Three normal appliances and two special appliances were used in the operation and around 22 firefighters attended the incident.
No-one was injured.
A PSNI spokesman said police were not treating the incident as suspicious.
