King’s Hotel fire, in Darlington

Photographer Chris Booth was driving across town after a rare victory in a poker game “I could see the town centre was lit up red.

“I quickly returned to my house to pick up my camera gear and decided I would be in a better position approaching the fire on foot.

“My first set of photos were taken of the hotel from the far side of the North Road roundabout looking down Northgate, where the police had cordoned off the area.

“I then moved anti-clockwise because of the position of the firefighters on elevated ladders battling the blaze and the direction in which the smoke was being blown.

“I wanted to get a shot of the firefighters silhouetted against the flames. Because it was in the the middle of the night, from a photographic point of view, the fire was my only real light source.

“In High Row, I saw a couple of colleagues and after capturing several more images, we attempted to get into the Echo office.

“However, due to the close proximity of the office to the hotel, the police would not let us back in.

“I was planning on editing and submitting the images I had taken from the office, but this wasn’t possible.

“In the end I sent my pictures using a laptop.

“I was unsure if they would make the next edition of the paper because no one was allowed to enter The Northern Echo building and my submissions were far later than the usual deadline.

“In the morning, I was amazed to see that the paper had managed to get the story in.”

Reporter Graeme Hetherington was also on the scene within minutes.

“Some great news stories take months of work to bring together and others are a matter of timing and seizing the moment.

“The night the King’s Hotel erupted in flames was definitely a case of the latter.

“Witnessing the fire light up the sky while plumes of smoke danced through the night air certainly got the adrenaline pumping.

“By the time I arrived on the scene, High Row was filled with firefighters and police officers, while members of the public watched the hotel being engulfed in flames.

“It was clear from the scale of the firefighting effort that the hotel was well ablaze and it was important to discover whether it had been safely evacuated or whether people were still trapped inside.

“The first task was locating the fire officer in charge, which proved to be simple.

However, it was slightly more difficult to convince him I was a journalist because I was wearing casual clothes.

“After a quick briefing it soon became apparent that the guests and staff had all reached safety, but the crews were in for a long night of dampening down the flames.

“Once the story was in my notebook we had to find a way of getting the news in the paper – something which proved difficult because the Echo’s office was out of bounds.

“A little gentle persuasion and a firefighter escort meant a special front page delivered the news to the people of Darlington within hours.

“Live, breaking stories get the adrenaline flowing and are a dramatic reminder of why most people get into journalism."