The main part of Glasgow Central station will remain closed until at least Wednesday, authorities have said, as work began to demolish an adjacent building ravaged by a fire.
Glasgow City Council said it is in the interests of public safety to demolish what remains of the “very unstable” Victorian building, which has continued to collapse since the fire started on Sunday afternoon. The fire began in a vape shop on Union Street and spread through the building and around the corner, with only the facade of the building at the junction with Gordon Street left standing. On Friday, demolition vehicles arrived at the site and began the slow process of demolishing the building. The blaze on Sunday forced neighbouring Glasgow Central, Scotland’s busiest railway station, to close. Network Rail Scotland said that with demolition work under way, its engineers cannot yet gain access to the station to assess the situation, and the main part of the station containing the high-level platforms will therefore remain shut until at least Wednesday (March 18).
Services in the lower level of the station began running again on Wednesday.
Ross Moran, route director at Network Rail Scotland, said: “We understand how disruptive this extended closure is for passengers and the wider city centre, and we’re extremely grateful for the continued patience and understanding people have shown.
“The damage to the building beside the station is clearly significant and any phased reopening will depend on demolition work progressing to a stage that allows our engineers to safely return.
“We’ll continue working closely with Glasgow City Council to support the response however we can.”
The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS) formally handed over control of the site to Glasgow City Council on Thursday.
In a statement that day, the council said: “We are now in control of the Union Street site, and after a full and final assessment of the remaining structure our Building Standards team have decided that demolition must happen in the interests of public safety.”
Glasgow City Council leader Susan Aitken said on Friday that the structure currently poses a risk to the public and has been cordoned off to keep people safe.
She said: “The structure where the fire was is now very unstable. It has no structural integrity.
“There’s a kind of a floating chimney stack that’s attached to the top of the wall. So, this is an unstable, dangerous site.
“It is obviously going to cause disruption to people for quite a while, and in particular the shops and the businesses who are within this cordon, and we’re providing as much support for them as we’re able to do.”
She added: “It’s going to take us a wee while to recover, but what I want to assure all Glaswegians, and indeed everybody that uses Central station, is that we will work as fast as we possibly can to get back to normality and then to rebuild and regenerate Union Street and Gordon Street.
“But, in the meantime, it is safety first for everyone and it is the protection of the public that is our number one priority.”
On Friday, workers could be seen in a cage suspended from a crane dismantling the remains of a chimney stack on a neighbouring building.
Network Rail said all available options for safely reopening the station were being explored, including whether a partial or phased reopening of some platforms might be possible.
It said engineers have so far not identified any significant structural issues with the station and that damage, mainly due to water ingress, appears to have been contained to a small office on the Union Street side of the station and a small part of the glazed area directly above it.
At the height of the incident, 18 fire appliances and specialist resources were at the scene.
Assistant chief officer Jon Henderson, SFRS director of prevention, said: “his was an incredibly challenging and complex incident which called upon resources and expertise from across the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service.
“We are extremely proud of our staff and incredibly thankful to our partners for helping to bring this incident to a safe conclusion.
“Despite the scale and intensity of this fire, no firefighters or members of the public were hurt and some of Glasgow’s most iconic buildings were saved from further damage.”
