A GWENT businessman was badly burned in an explosion and another man died in a car crash as the fire strike continues.

The Chepstow businessman is today in Morriston Hospital's burns unit, Swansea, after an oxy- acetalyne torch exploded in a garage at Shirenewton.

And a man in his early thirties from Ebbw Vale died and two other people were injured on Saturday afternoon in a traffic accident.

Green and Red Goddesses were called to the Chepstow incident - at Old School House in the Grove in Earlswood, near Shirenewton - at 5.15pm yesterday.

The injured man, Marcus Ostler, who runs Ostler's store in Magor, is said to have an interest in drag racing and is believed to have an engineering workshop in the garage of his house where the blaze started.

Local people say that his wife called for the emergency services while he tackled the blaze himself.

Mr Ostler, who is in his 30s, was taken to the Royal Gwent Hospital, Newport, and later transferred to Morriston Hospital as an emergency.

One of the Goddesses was called in from Chepstow and a specialist breathing apparatus rescue team and another Goddess were called in from Raglan Barracks in Newport. It took the teams two hours to extinguish the fire.

The fatal car accident happened just after midday when two vehicles collided on the A465 Heads of the Valleys road at Dowlais, Merthyr Tydfil.

The Ebbw Vale man has not yet been named by South Wales Police.

The male driver and woman passenger of the second vehicle suffered slight injuries and were taken to hospital, and both have since been released.

A Green Goddess and a team with specialist cutting equipment were deployed but were not needed as police and ambulance teams dealt with the incident.

A spokeswoman from the Welsh Ambulance Trust said nobody had needed to be cut free from their vehicle after the accident, so the firefighters' strike had not affected the outcome of the incident.

* In the picture: The scene of the Chepstow explosion.