Shropshire wedding anniversary firefighter saves blaze firm that catered for his big day
A Shropshire firefighter helped save a business which had catered at his wedding – two years to the day since he got married.
Fire service investigations are ongoing after the blaze at the Lower Edgebold Industrial Estate, in Hanwood, near Shrewsbury, which broke out on Monday afternoon.
The fire spread to business Tipples Mobile Bar and Catering Hire once it had started, and caused thousands of pounds of damage.
Tim Aversa, owner of the business, said they were already back up and running and all bookings with the company are safe.
In a bizarre quirk of fate Mr Aversa also revealed that one of the firefighters who helped to rescue some of the firm's equipment had actually hired the company for his wedding – which was two years ago on the same day.
He said: "We were quite lucky with the fire, we were back up and running yesterday, but it has caused thousands of pounds of damage.
"It travelled to us and took our upstairs out, we've lost a lot of our kitchen equipment.
"I recognised one of the firefighters, Sam Dawes, he'd employed us for his wedding two years ago.
"I reminded him that at the end of his wedding he'd said 'Let me know if there's anything I can do for you', and I said 'Well now there is".
"He got his guys to get as much of our stuff out as possible then.
"We're as operational as we can be, the electricity is back on now.
"We're really, really thankful that it happened in the day time when there were people around to call the fire service."
Mr Dawes said: "I knew the industrial estate when we were called out. When we arrived it was pretty manic and I'd been working for a while before I saw Tim.
"It was my second wedding anniversary and Tim and Charlotte did the bar for us on our wedding day.
"The irony is they were working hard on my wedding day and then I was working very hard to help them.
"They were absolutely fantastic on my wedding day, they're really good, and they're actually booked in to do another firefighter's wedding in September this year."
More then 30 firefighters in six appliances were sent to the scene to tackle the blaze which affected multiple businesses.
