PHUKET: Police were due to begin a hunt for bodies and for the cause of the SuperCheap superstore blaze at 2.30pm this afternoon.

Forensics officers from Region 8 headquarters in Surat Thani are to join the Phuket forensics team in an examination.

So far, estimates of large numbers of dead appear wide of the mark.

The fire may not have spread fast enough to trap anyone inside the cavernous store when it was first noticed about 9.30pm.

Apart from a few superficial injuries noted when a Phuketwan reporter visited the Vachira Phuket Hospital in Phuket City last night, there have been no reports of burned survivors.

There is also as yet not long list of missing, indicating that although the blaze was huge, it may not have killed anyone.

Phuket Governor Maitree Intrusud visited the site today. He said he had been told there could have been 100 people in the landmark Phuket store at the time the blaze was first noticed.

Customer Prasert Pansuk, who visits the store every day, told Phuketwan that he had just bought some chicken and picked up some yellow dye for rice when someone said a fire had broken out.

''At that stage, I saw the fire and urged everyone to run,'' he said. When Khun Prasert spoke to a reporter at the scene late last night, he still had the rice dye in his hand.

''The flames were not especially high at that stage, so people were able to hurry out,'' he said.

A staffer at the store also saw the blaze and customers kept asking whether they really had to leave, or whether they could continue shopping.

''Once people saw the fire for themselves, they ran,'' the woman staffer said. ''Staff tried to control it but it quickly became apparent that it could not be controlled.''

There was too much wood and flammable materials for it to be stopped, she said.

SuperCheap has 3500 employees at the store, making it probably the biggest private employer on Phuket.

Of the staff, 2736 workers are Thai and the rest are mostly Burmese, with some Cambodians and Laotians.

The store covered 7700 square metres and there was a 4000 square metre warehouse attached, on 31 rai of land.

With the blaze now appearing to have caused few if any deaths, the attention of the authorities and the store's owners has turned to the economic consequences.

SuperCheap was the source of most fresh food for businesses not just all across Phuket, but beyond the island to Phang Nga and Krabi as well.

Restaurants and resorts on the mainland and on other offshore islands also shop out of preference at SuperCheap.

There will be no replacement for the SuperCheap network in a hurry.

Local SuperCheap convenience stores visited by Phuketwan reporters today were all without their usual fresh food stocks.