A gas explosion rocked a Bradford street today leaving a scene of devastation in its wake.

Fire officers called to a parade of blazing shops in Little Horton Lane at 4am said it was lucky no-one was maimed or killed in the blast.

Three adjoining shops Honeycomb Sweets and Clean and Tidy Hardware were reduced to rubble in the explosion and fierce fire which followed.

Luckily the explosion happened in the early hours when the street was deserted. Passers-by would have been lucky to escape with their lives, said fire officers.

The force of the blast blew open the front of one shop and the fire was so intense it buckled a nearby street-lamp. Fifteen firemen from Odsal and Bradford Central fire stations took two hours to bring the blaze under control.

Sub officer David Ellershaw of Odsal fire station said: "It was a severe explosion, there was probably half a ton in his shopfront and all the glass has shattered.

"If anybody had been walking past it would have killed them."

He said leaking gas cylinders in the fridge-freezer repair shop, Clean and Tidy Hardware, had caused a build up of gas in the premises and an electrical fault produced a spark which led to the blast.

"The fire rapidly spread to the shops downhill," the fire officer said. "Next to these shops, there are more shops with accommodation above and we were concerned at the beginning for these residents, but it wasn't necessary to evacuate."

Three shops have been reduced to rubble and two adjoining shops, a hair salon and a washing machine repair shop, have been smoke-damaged.

Shop-owner John Lever, 46, of East Bowling who rents the premises said his businesses were ruined.

"I am out of business. I only started up in December, and now there's just nothing, just brickwork and rubble. We had only been open 16 weeks.

"It's just as well it happened during the night, nobody in there would have survived. In three or four minutes the building was gutted."

The alarm was raised by Alan Morley, landlord of the Brown Cow Inn on the opposite side of the road.

He was due to take over the lease for the hardware shop on May 1 for one of his daughters. He was woken by his pet lurcher, Alfred.

"I looked out of the window and the place was well alight. The next second the explosion just blew the window out.

"It took no time to get to the other shops. You could feel the heat through our windows - it was really intense."

Traffic heading up Little Horton Lane out of Bradford was diverted as police sealed off the road between Southfield Road and Thornton Lane.

The fire also smoke damaged the Silhouette Hairdressing Salon run by 25-year-old Donna Chew.

"When my taxi arrived to take me to work the driver said 'I don't think you will be opening today'.

"I feel completely gutted."

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