Manchester's fruit, vegetable and flower wholesalers lost an estimated £200,000-£300,000 last Friday, as Smithfield Market was closed for 24 hours, due to an 'unexploded bomb'.
The problem surfaced on Thursday afternoon when a council worker using an oxyacetalene cutting tool behind the market's A Block encountered burn back problems and called in the fire brigade. The incident became a health and safety issue and the tool, by now being treated as a bomb, was isolated under running water for 24 hours.
Joint tenants' association chairman Dave Holroyd of JB Brown takes up the story. 'Myself and Mike Morgan (also joint chairman) were called in on Thursday and at first they were talking about cordoning off an area of 650 metres in diameter. Once they realised what that entailed in terms of evacuation of people, they decided it would be easier to close the market en bloc.' The accident could not have happened on a worse day. 'As a market,' said Holroyd, 'a conservative estimate is that fruit, vegetable and flower traders lost between £200,000 and £300,000 in turnover. My company lost somewhere between £50,000 and £60,000.' 'Disastrous,' was the reaction of Joe Pennington, at A&E Pennington. 'We couldn't get near the place, there was absolutely nothing we could do about it.
'It was extremely damaging to our weekend trade. And, although we had a good day on Saturday, it was impossible to make up the lost trade. If it had been a Wednesday we would have just shrugged our shoulders, but Friday caused chaos.' Jim Dempsey, operations manager, Manchester markets, said: 'This was not a decision we took lightly and the final outcome would have been far more serious if our health and safety people hadn't acted quickly initially. We certainly wouldn't be trading here now.
'There is an investigation under way into the incident, but it was just extremely unfortunate.' The decision to close the market was taken long after business hours on the Thursday and customers turned up in the early hours of the morning, only to find that the gates were shut.
The tenants' association warned as many people as possible but, said Pennington: 'Even so, some of our customers thought we should have warned them, but we don't have their home numbers. They had to look elsewhere for their produce. Some would have gone to Liverpool, which I believe was pretty jammed and some to Bolton – they must have had a field day.' Holroyd said: 'We have had lots of thank you letters from our friends in Liverpool and Bolton, but this was just one of those things.
'I'm told this market went through two world wars without having to shut its doors – a bloke comes in to do a spot of welding and all hell breaks loose!' 'We are not blaming anyone,' said Pennington. 'If there were health and safety issues then it was much better to take the necessary precuations than risk the loss of human life.'
