The Gazette in Blackpool produced a special early edition which went on sale alongside the nationals yesterday after a huge fire gutted one of the resort’s most iconic buildings.

First reports of the blaze which ripped through the famous Yates’s wine lodge appeared on the Gazette’s website blackpoolgazette.co.uk at breakfast time on Sunday.

From then a team worked on fresh reports, pictures and video – more than quadrupling the site’s average Sunday traffic to more than 25,000 page views. They also made the most of user-generated videos and pictures.

A team volunteered to come in to the office to allow the paper to print overnight and be on sale early on Monday ensuring readers didn’t miss a thing.

The Gazette normally prints at 9am and is in the shops by 10am. However yesterday’s edition, pictured below, was printed at 3am enabling it to go on sale alongside the nationals.

Gazette editor David Helliwell said: “By mid-morning on Sunday it was pretty clear we already had a huge amount of copy and pictures.

“Lots of information was available to our website users and it seemed a shame to wait until our regular print slot to share dramatic pictures and eye-witness accounts with our newspaper readers.

“We were able to negotiate a print slot that allowed us to go on straight after the nationals and so be on sale much earlier with five pages of coverage that readers wouldn’t be getting anywhere else.

“As always it was a team effort, from the journalists who gave up their Sundays to ensure we had everything we needed, to our newspaper sales and production teams who swung into action straight away.”

Around 100 fire-fighters were called in to tackle the 3am blaze and a 21-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of arson.