‘Smoking' blamed for fire at Atlantic Hotel

The four-AA-starred Atlantic Hotel in Newquay has said that a fire which broke out in the early hours of Sunday morning was caused by someone smoking on a balcony.

In a Facebook post yesterday the hotel said a "small fire" started at 3am on Sunday morning "due to an incident concerning smoking".

It confirmed that all guests and staff are safe. Guests were evacuated and taken to the nearby Headland Hotel.

The hotel reopened for breakfast at 7:30am, with fire damage affecting some of the bedrooms.

Stewart Whitworth from Cornwall Fire and Rescue Service said: "When our crews got here shortly after [the call], they saw the fire was also developing on the outside of the building so they requested four pumps to come to the job and also the aerial platform. That allowed us to hit the fire very, very hard and very quickly and we were able to extinguish it fairly swiftly."

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