DEVASTATED owners of a successful wood fuel business are counting a mammoth cost after a blaze caused £250,000 worth of damage when it ripped through their yard.

A huge inferno swept through the packed warehouse at Knockmountain, on the outskirts of Kilmacolm, consuming £100,000 worth of timber, destroying £50,000-worth of machinery and wrecking a £100,000 storage building.

The blaze raged for almost 30 hours and teams of firefighters had to operate in shifts to fight the flames from Saturday morning right through into Sunday.

Kate Wilson, who co-owns Caledonian Wood Fuels with her husband Colin, said: “One of the guys was going to work at our other yard on the other side of the hill at 5.30am on Saturday.

“He told us he could see an orange glow on the horizon but the fire brigade were already there.

“They got here at around 4am in the morning.” Kate was left stunned by the scale of the fire and its aftermath, and says it is a sickening blow.

She said: “I just felt disbelief, especially at this time of year.” When the couple raced to the scene they could only watch as a year’s worth of dried-out timber went up in smoke.

Kate, 34, said: “It was like a big living room fire — quite something.

“The flames were really high and it was glowing hot.

“It was a roaring inferno.” Kate believes that teenagers may have been unwittingly responsible by lighting a small fire in the shed without thinking of the disastrous consequences.

She said: “This fire had the potential to destroy half of our business and so many firemen were taken out of circulation for 30 hours.

“It is a huge waste of resources.

“The people behind it are not seeing the big picture.” While condemning the firestarters, Kate praised the crews who battled the flames.

She told the Tele: “The fire service were fantastic and worked so hard to get the blaze under control.

“We cannot thank them enough.

“There’s no water supply up here, so they had to go to the top of Kilmacolm, fill up with water, empty the water and go away again.

“There were three or four engines there working in rotation.” Kate and Colin, who live with their two young sons Daniel, six, and Joseph, four, in Port Glasgow Road, Kilmacolm, returned to the site on Saturday night to find the building still ablaze.

She said: “I was expecting there still to be a bit of smoke but it was still roaring away.” A two-month-old piece of machinery bought to scoop logs from the cutting machine was gutted and a supply of wood chips being stored at the facility was also destroyed.

Colin and Kate, who also own a tree surgery company, have been working hard to build their business up over the last six years at the yard and are still recovering from a previous fire last year.

They have between 150 and 200 customers, including Cameron House Hotel at Loch Lomond, and also supply other log sellers in the area and enjoy a good reputation for supplying good quality dry timber.

Kate said: “My heart just sinks when I see the mess and the fact we’re back to square one again at our busiest time of year.

“We’ve been working flat out to cut more timber.

“The shed was full — it was worth around £100,000, once you take in the manpower of guys splitting the logs and delivering them.

“It’s quite an operation.

“Most of our logs had been drying for a year.

“We’re devastated. It’s taken six years to build up our reputation, get the right equipment, then literally overnight, all that hard work and effort goes up in smoke.” Kate hopes that the police will catch those responsible for the fire and says she and her husband will get things back on track.

They are being forced to rent storage space from other firms and are trying to stay positive and reassure customers that they will be able to honour their orders.

He said: “We are very happy that no one was hurt but it will take us considerable time, money and effort to recoup the damage done to our business and our livelihood.

“We have had teenagers ‘hanging out’ up there in the past and there had been vandalism to one of our machines on Friday night too so unfortunately we suspect that this has been local kids responsible.

“I would say to any parents of teenagers in Kilmacolm or the Port Glasgow area that if their kids came home on Friday night smelling of fire and very muddy, they might like to ask them where they were.

“My poor husband tries hard to paint a smile on, saying that this a setback, but it took as long enough to get over the other fire.

“We just want a wee bit of awareness to what small rural businesses are up against.”