Nine fire crews fight blaze at Blarney hotel

IT TOOK nine fire crews more than an hour to bring a huge fire at a disused Cork hotel under control last night.

The crews, six from the county brigade and three from the city, managed to contain the fire at the former 91-bed Blarney Park Hotel to its leisure centre.

A fire brigade spokesman said one of the problems its officers had was the length of the roof and the speed at which the flames spread.

Gardaí are treating the blaze as suspicious and a forensic team is due to examine the scene today.

Superintendent Con Cadogan of Gurranabraher garda station said youths were seen in the area around the time of the blaze but they were not ruling out the possibility it started accidentally.

He said it appeared the fire had started high in the roof of the leisure centre.

“We will be doing a technical examination of what is left of the building,” he said. “We have to keep an open mind.”

On Monday, fire crews had to deal with a fire in fields behind the hotel started in bales of hay.

The hotel, which opened in 1969, has been closed since last October. Its owners, the Blarney Woollen Mills Group, shut it as part of plans to develop the site into a multi- million-euro development.

At that point the group said its vision for the site included a new hotel and leisure centre along with offices, apartments and retail units.

Then earlier this year Blarney Woollen Mills put the hotel on the market.

The selling agents HOK Savills and DTZ Sherry FitzGerald said recently they were under active negotiation for the 11 acre, €20 million site.