STAFF and customers at Tesco, in Devizes, were evacuated yesterday morning when there was a suspected gas leak.

Staff acted quickly when gas was seen coming out of one of the supermarket's refrigeration units at about 10.40am.

An announcement over the public address system asked all customers to leave the store.

There were about 60 members of staff and 20 customers inside the store at the time.

Members of staff who are the supermarket's fire wardens were the last to leave the building as they made sure all the public had left. Some customers had to abandon their shopping baskets.

One member of staff said: "I just saw a haze near a refrigeration unit and it smelt unpleasant."

Another member of staff said: "The customers were really good about evacuating the supermarket.

"They understood that we needed to do it as a precaution."

Store manager John Barton praised his staff for the efficient way the store was evacuated.

"I am proud of my staff and how they reacted," he said.

"We have regular fire drills and it's a credit to the training we give our staff that they got people out of the store safely and quickly."

Two crews from Devizes Fire Station were quickly on the scene and four firefighters wearing breathing apparatus went in, switched off the refrigeration units and waited for an engineer from Tesco to arrive.

Part of Maryport Street was cordoned off by police while the firefighters were investigating.

An engineer from gas company Transco was also called to check outside the building but found no leakage of the main gas supply.

An ambulance from Devizes was also on standby in case anybody suffered ill-effects from the emissions but no one required treatment.

The Tesco engineer reported that the gas which had leaked out was only refrigeration gas and therefore not harmful.

The gas came from a leaking pipe on a cooler unit which feeds into the refrigeration unit. The unit was taken out of action to be repaired and firefighters ventilated the building and left after two and a half hours.

The supermarket was then re-opened.

Divisional officer Simon Routh-Jones, who was at the scene, said: "Fortunately the incident was not serious but we took precautions to be on the safe side.

"The person in charge at Tesco acted correctly in evacuating the store as that enabled us to concentrate on stopping the leak without having to worry about members of the public being affected."

jcrooks@newswilts.co.uk