A massive blaze has destroyed a historic wedding venue in the New South Wales Hawkesbury.<\/p>\n
Emergency services were called to the site, Loxley on Bellbird Hill, in Kurrajong Hills, after a fire broke out about 7pm on Friday.<\/p>\n
More than 80 firefighters with 25 trucks worked through the night to prevent the flames from spreading to nearby buildings and bushland.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
About 85 firefighters battled the blaze at the historic wedding venue in the Hawkesbury\u00a0throughout the night. (Supplied: NSW Rural Fire Service)<\/p>\n
Rural Fire Service Inspector James Morris said crews were confronted by several challenges on arrival, including gas cylinders.<\/p>\n
The age of the building also created an asbestos exposure risk.<\/p>\n
“We saw access challenges given it’s such a narrow short driveway to [the] structure, we saw challenges around water supply,” Inspector Morris said.<\/p>\n
“Thankfully, the site had a large pool and two large water tanks \u2026 which firefighters were able to utilise.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The aftermath of the blaze that tore through a heritage wedding venue in Kurrajong Hills.\u00a0 (ABC)<\/p>\n
There were no functions occurring inside the venue when the fire broke out, but three staff members were at the site.<\/p>\n
One of the staff, who is the owner’s son, suffered minor burns when he attempted to douse the flames.<\/p>\n
Police said the 40-year-old was taken to hospital for further treatment.<\/p>\n
Despite the best efforts of the Rural Fire Service and Fire and Rescue NSW, the main building on the property was completely destroyed and surrounding structures were damaged.<\/p>\n
Fire crews remained at the scene early on Saturday morning to monitor hotspots.<\/p>\n
The Loxley was built in 1864 and has played host to weddings, conferences and special events.<\/p>\n
Investigators will examine the scene today but the fire is not being treated as suspicious.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A massive blaze has destroyed a historic wedding venue in the New South Wales Hawkesbury. Emergency services were…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":122585,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,86286,7770,86287,86288,44,2733,1158,670,22676],"class_list":["post-122584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-emergency-response","tag-fire","tag-hawkesbury","tag-kurrajon-hills","tag-news","tag-nsw","tag-police","tag-sydney","tag-wedding"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122584\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/122585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}