Firefighters were still working through hotspots on Wednesday after a blaze tore through a car showroom near Garvagh, County Londonderry, gutting the building that also houses a cafe and destroying six cars. The Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue Service said it believed the fire at Carhill Cars on Carhill Road was deliberate.

About 55 firefighters were sent to the scene at the height of the blaze after the first crews arrived at about 04:30 BST and found the fire already well-developed. At that point, six fire appliances were in attendance, along with a command support unit and a water tanker, as crews tried to contain flames in what one official described as quite a large operation.

By the time the fire was brought under control, the building had been completely gutted. Four other cars were damaged by heat and smoke, and the service said crews had to deal with multiple hazards including cylinders, oils and aerosols. David Doherty said the vehicles and the contents inside the building, along with some surrounding vehicles, were destroyed. He said the loss would be a big hit to the local economy.

The Carhill Road site is more than a dealership. It also includes a cafe, and that made the damage felt across two businesses at once. The fire service said the scale of the operation reflected the risks inside the building, where fuel, equipment and other materials complicated the effort to get the flames under control.

With the fire extinguished, the work now turns to determining how it began. NIFRS said it will move on to a fire investigation to establish the cause, after judging the blaze to have been deliberate. DUP councillor Michelle Knight-McQuillan said the fire had left two businesses completely devastated. She said there would be loss of jobs and loss of business, and added that the cafe owner was in a complete state of shock after getting messages about the fire early in the morning.

For Garvagh, the damage is already measured in smoke, wreckage and uncertainty. The next stage is the investigation, but the immediate reality is clearer: one site, two businesses and a string of vehicles were all wiped out before many people had even started their day.