An Explosion in New Ferry

My wife and I moved to Bebington in August 2016. It was an exciting time as we had bought our first house together. We loved Liverpool but we were ready for a change. We had lived for many years in a bedsit in Kensington and the crime and poverty in ‘Kenny’, as the locals call it, had really soured us on the city. A move to the Wirral promised a fresh start and our house was perfectly situated, just a few minutes walk from Bebington railway station, the beautiful Port Sunlight Village and New Ferry. We expected a quieter, more sedate life, and it was, until one night a shocking event made the area the subject of national television and press coverage.

On March 25, 2017, my wife and I were at home watching the film A United Kingdom when the house seemed to shake from the foundations upwards by this loud bang. I thought someone had ramrodded a car through the door. After letting slip some choice language, I decided to investigate. I went out into the street and saw other people stumble out of their homes in morbid and shocked curiosity. I followed the sound of the explosion. The ‘Homes in Style’ furniture shop adjoining a dance studio in New Ferry had been set alight less than half a mile from us. There was smoke in the air and a metallic tang penetrated the back of my throat the nearer I got to the epicentre of the blast. I was walking towards the area other people were streaming away from in a general state of chaos. It looked like a war zone. The emergency services arrived and shooed me back. I’m not claiming any sense of bravery in walking towards the blast. I went through a combined sense of shock, curiosity and a vague notion that I might be able to help. I was of no help, as it happens, and returned home.

The explosion, which was described in court as ‘colossal’, had been caused by Pascal Blasio, who was the owner of ‘Homes in Style’. He was deeply in debt and started the blaze in a desperate and cack-handed attempt to swindle the insurers out of £50,000. Blasio had removed the insured furniture from the store the day before the explosion. His harebrained scheme cost 78 people their homes, and caused 81 physical injuries, at least one of which was life-changing; it was so severe. As if by a miracle, no one was killed. Blasio was sentenced to twenty years imprisonment for causing the explosion, and eight years for fraud to be served concurrently. 

After a day or two, the story slipped from national attention. The people who were the most deeply affected had to struggle with the misery Blasio had unleashed on their lives by detonating the largest explosion in Merseyside since World War Two. In many ways, life went to back to normal and the area became the peaceful community that attracts so many city dwellers looking for a quieter life.

But none of us who heard that explosion and witnessed its aftermath will ever forget that fiery night in New Ferry.