FIRES ARE STILL BURNING OUT OF CONTROL TUESDAY EVENING in Detroit, Michigan, following a massive windstorm that has been passing through the upper Mid-West today. The gale-force winds brought down power lines all across the city and some of them started fires that spread to other houses.
ABC News
At this time there are four separate areas in the city where dozens of houses have burned down with many still on fire. The increased demand for fire flow has left the hydrant mains with such low pressure and flow that maintaining hose streams is difficult if not impossible. ABC News reports:
Ben Hardaway, who owns a business near one of the areas that was engulfed in flames this evening, said the fire leapt from house to house.
“The fire started, looked like a garage about the second or third house off the corner,” he said. “It spread quickly because of the wind, the wind whipping it going toward the east and it went from one, two, three, four houses, jumped across the street. There are seven houses on fire on the end of the block on the other end.”
ABC News
Some callers to 9-1-1 are being told that no fire engines are available to respond to their fire. In some other cases the FD is arriving on the scene as much as 30 minutes after it was called in.
Fox News
At the time of this posting, 10:30 pm Eastern, there are still many fires burning out of control and it is not known how many houses have been lost so far. It won’t be until later Wednesday that any estimate can be made.
The Detroit Fire Department, already under-manned and ill-equipped, was soon overtaxed by the blazes leaving some of them burning without any fire department presence. For the first time in over 40 years the DFD called neighboring departments for mutual aid assistance.
Detroit News
This report will be updated Wednesday morning.
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