The three-alarm fire, reported around 1 p.m. Thursday, has firefighters from mutual aid stations in Northampton, Bucks and Lehigh counties responding with tanker trucks to bring water to the fire.
Firefighters on scene initially reported flames from three of the four bays of the fire station at 1995 Leithsville Road, which is Route 412 in Lower Saucon Township.
Emergency radio dispatches said there is at least one burn victim and the fire has spread to the entire building. A social banquet hall on the property to the rear of the fire station is not involved in the fire.
Two tanker task forces with at least 10 trucks have reportedly set up to draw water from two locations off Routes 412 and 212, and fire police have closed down those roads in the area of the fire station.
Leithsville's equipment is presumably still inside the building. The fire company has a 2001 E-One engine, a 1991 E-One heavy rescue truck, two tankers trucks and a brush trucks, according to its website.
This is a breaking incident and reports are just coming in. Firegeezer will be updating so check back for fresh reports.
A FIRE AT A GREELEY, COLORADO, WOOD PALLET manufacturer consumed thousands of pallets covering a city block-sized area Wednesday aftenoon. The 2-alarm fire was dispatched to Et&t Pallets at 3:45 pm Mountain and was contained within an hour. But the fire continued to burn for several hours due to the fire load and air spaces between the stacks. The Greeley Tribune tells:
No habitable structures were burned — the wooden pallets, stacked in piles 12 feet high, were stored out in the open, spanning a city block. A few sheds, six vehicles and two semi trailers were lost, but a house on the property, as well as a building on the lot to the north, were saved.
Fire units remained on the scene all night and into this morning knocking down the hot spots. This is the second major fire in 18 months at the plant.
Greeley Tribune
The Greeley Tribune has a photo gallery and the FULL STORY.
FIRE BROKE OUT ONBOARD A NUCLEAR SUBMARINE Wednesday evening in the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine.
AP
The alarm was dispatched at 5:40 pm to the USS Miami SSN 755 that was in the shipyard for routine maintenance and repairs. It has been reported that seven people were injured fighting the fire. Fox News reports:
Rear Adm. Richard Breckenridge, commander of Submarine Group Two, said that three shipyard firefighters, two civilian firefighters and two crew members received minor injuries and were in good shape. (They were primarily heat exhaustion….ed.)
Breckenridge called their efforts heroic, saying the extreme heat and smoke in the contained spaces made it very challenging for them. "Their efforts clearly minimized the severity of this event," he said at a brief news conference.
Breckenridge said the fire started in the four forward compartments, which include living and command and control spaces. The sub's reactor, isolated in another part of the sub, had been shut down for a few months at the time and was unaffected. Breckenridge said it "remains in a safe and stable condition." No weapons were on board.
At 4 am this morning it was announced that the fire had been extinguished. It has also been reported that a foam unit from Boston's Logan International Airport, 60 miles away, was added to the dispatch.
Fox News has shared this video report from the scene:
The cause of the fire and the amount of damage have not been determined, but considering the military security needed, there may not be much disclosed anyway.
The USS Miami was commissioned in 1990 and is based in Groton, Connecticut. It has been in Portsmouth since March 1. It normally carries a crew of 13 officers and 120 enlisted men. It normally is armed with torpedos and Tomahawk cruise missiles. The Portsmouth Naval Shipyard was established on June 12, 1800, and is the oldest continuously operating shipyard run by the Navy, according to Gary Hildreth, a public affairs officer for the facility.
AN EARLY MORNING FIRE IN BOLTON, ONTARIO, had several families fleeing for their lives Wednesday.
The fire started shortly after 3 am on a back porch of one of the townhouses that stretched along a city block. All of the homes had working smoke detectors but the fire was spreading outside and into the attic before some of them were activated. Neighbors throughout the block mobilized to see that everybody was awakened and evacuated safely, which they accomplished.
The blaze destroyed four homes and severely damaged two others that may be able to be salvaged. The roofs of three of them collapsed as the fire ran the common attic area of the block.
Global Toronto image
The FD arrived on the scene around 3:30 and set up containment operations immediately. The 80 firefighters had the fire knocked down by 6 am.
Global Toronto has the story and a good video report HERE. CP24 News has more and additional video HERE.
A 3-ALARM FIRE IN MANCHESTER, NEW HAMPSHIRE, that destroyed an apartment house caused six firefighters to be temporarily trapped on the upper floor when a "flashover explosion" in the attic blew the ceiling down on them.
The building is a seven-unit, multi-family building. Chief James Burkush described it as a wooden structure more than 100 years old.
The fire department said about seven minutes after their initial attack at the fire, a flashover explosion in the attic caused the ceiling to collapse. Six firefighters were temporarily trapped inside as visibility dropped to zero and heat increased significantly.
Firefighters who were not trapped were able to free their partners from the rubble, the fire department said.
One of the firefighters was treated for minor injuries but they all were taken out safely.
This home video posted by Jim Terrero catches some good fire footage that emphasizes how fortunate the six FF's were to be rescued so promptly on that top floor:
The FD estimates that the fire had been burning for about an hour before it was discovered and reported around 3:30 pm.
The insurance adjusters have already written it off as a total loss. The owner of the building says it has been in her family for several generations. It was currently being renovated. Early investigation is considering that the fire started in the former stable attached to the rear of the house that you can see in the photo.
This Google Street View of the house illustrates the close exposure that the FD was able to protect.
A 2-ALARM COMMERCIAL FIRE IN BEACH PARK, ILLINOIS, Sunday was elevated to a 3rd when the town's limited hydrant flow was insufficient. The fire was dispatched at 6:06 am after it was discovered by a police patrol. The Chicago Tribune reported:
A Beach Park pet store was completely destroyed this morning after a blaze broke out in the basement and killed hamsters, gerbils, fish and reptiles, officials said.
photo by Larry Shapiro
Firefighters were alerted about 6 a.m. to the Happyland Pet Center located at 11432 W. Wadsworth Rd. and found heavy smoke, said Beach Park Fire Department Chief Paul Tierney.
The two-story building housed a pet store on the first level and residential apartments on the second level, Tierney said. No humans were injured.
Firefighters went into rescue mode and searched the upstairs of the structure when a flashover occurred. A water supply issue at the scene slowed down firefighting efforts and assisting companies were called in from 15 surrounding communities including Waukegan, Zion and Newport, Tierney said. About 75 firefighters were called to the scene.
Larry Shapiro photo
"The fire had been burning for quite some time before we were called," said Tierney. He added the fire originated in a concrete bunker-type basement that had only one entrance.
As mentioned earlier, a tanker shuttle was set up from the special-call for water supply and fire photographer Larry Shapiro was on the scene documenting all the fire operations and equipment dispatch.
Check out that lineup of Fold-a-tanks! (Shapiro photo)
You can view Larry's 206-image photo gallery of the fire (and tankers in action) HERE.
Larry also took a breather to compile this raw video:
Firegeezer points out that this is not so much a fire story, but rather a tanker story – my passion.
A LOUISIANA TECH UNIVERSITY Fraternity house in Ruston burned down Saturday afternoon, completely destroying the large home that was next to the university campus.
News-Star
The fire was first reported at 4:30 pm, but it may have been burning for quite a while before then. The early speculation is that several residents were celebrating the end of the school year by burning some textbooks in the fireplace and the fire got into the void space around the chimney and spread through the walls. Somebody on campus had called the police to say that they saw smoke coming from the house. Why they called the police instead of the fire department has not been asked yet.
When an officer showed up to check on the report, the boys (perhaps unknowing of the hidden fire spreading) told him that everything was under control. It wasn't long after that the fire suddenly broke out and the FD was called. It didn't take long for the roof to collapse, thus dooming the entire structure.
Lt. Tim Parker, spokesman for the Ruston Police Department, said the fire began in the fireplace or chimney of the Pike house, and quickly reached the attic where it grew rapidly.
He said one firefighter was injured when the roof of the building collapsed, knocking down a flight of stairs the man was standing on. He was taken to the hospital with minor injuries. Two other firefighters were treated for heat exhaustion, Parker said.
Parker said officers with the Ruston police managed to awaken and evacuate one student who was still asleep in the apartments at the back of the fraternity home at the time of the fire. All six students who (were) in the house were evacuated safely with no reported injuries, according to Parker.
Read the full story in the TimesHERE.
Ruston Fire Department WEBSITE.
A 41-YEAR-OLD FIREFIGHTER IN CHEMNITZ, Germany, perished Sunday morning when the roof of a burning furniture warehouse collapsed. The unnamed firefighter was working along with 45 colleagues at the fire when it fell in. A second firefighter was hospitalized with smoke poisoning.
Freipresse
The fire began around midnight and it took several hours for the four fire departments working the blaze to knock it down. They were able to contain it and prevent the spread to close exposures including a gas station.
There is no indication yet of what caused the fire. An investigation has been started. A spokesman for the city stated that this is the first LODD for the town that they know of.
Sachsen-Fernsehen has the early REPORT. Chemnitz News has an updated report HERE.
Thanks to Christian Lewalter of Feuerwehn Weblog.
Firegeezer notes that German law prohibits anyone from identifying the name of recently-deceased people until the family releases it first. Sometimes they decline to do that.
WHEN FIRE STARTED RACING THROUGH a commercial building in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania Friday afternoon, the Studio Raw Hair Salon was filled with customers, most of them high school girls getting ready for this weekend's prom.
The 2-alarm fire began around 2 pm.
(North Hills Patch)
The 2-story building had been added on to over the decades and was filled with hidden voids and attic spaces. As the fire grew quickly, everyone was told to evacuate but the salon's owners and employees couldn't abandon their customers. The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review tells what happened next:
"We didn't want to disappoint them, so as we were leaving the building we grabbed a (styling) chair and some other equipment so we could keep working outside," he said.
Dan Burda, another of the salon's owners, said getting all the clients done — especially those preparing for the prom — was important.
"It's a big event in their lives," he said. "There's no way we were going to turn them away because of a fire."
As the fire continued on its way to completely gutting the building that held five businesses, the Studio Raw crew kept on cuttin'. The clippers weren't the only ones getting kudos yesterday. More from the Tribune-Review:
Attorney Michael Eisen, who has his bankruptcy law practice in the building at 3185 Babcock Blvd., said the willingness "to go above and beyond" that the salon operators exhibited extended to the (firefighters).
"I realized that everything in my office was probably destroyed," Eisen said. "But I asked one of the firefighters whether he thought there was a chance my law school diploma could be salvaged. Before I knew it, he was walking out of the building and handed it to me."
WTAE-TV
WTAE-TV has a good video HERE.
The North Hills Patch has MORE.
A LINE OF VIOLENT THUNDERSTORMS that swept up the East Coast Tuesday night lent a lightning strike on a Dow Chemical storage tank in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. The blaze that broke out in the 250,000-gallon tank quickly spread to a second tank and brought a 3-alarm response from several Pennsylvania and New Jersey fire departments.
Courier Times
The tanks contained ethyl acrylate and butyl acrylate, both of which are used in the manufacture of acrylic paints. The fire began at 3:35 am Wednesday morning when the lightning bolt hit the Dow plant in Croydon. During the incident, a volunteer police officer, David Wintz, 65, was directing traffic when he began feeling ill. He then went home where he suffered a fatal heart attack. No other information has been released on this sad outcome.
The fire departments attacked the tank fires with heavy applications of foam and finally had them cooled down enough by 5:30 where they stopped re-igniting spontaneously.
A FIRE BROKE OUT AT A PARIS, France, BMW motorcycle dealer around 1 pm Monday afternoon.
Le Parisien
The Paris Fire Brigade was on the scene quickly with the first units arriving in less than five minutes, but the fire was already extending through a major portion of the rear part of the building. There were many close exposures and the firefighters worked hard to successfully contain the fire to the dealer's property.
20minutes
The building that burned was a major repair workshop for motorcycles and was completely destroyed. One of the employees told 20minutes, a news agency, that around 1 pm he heard a loud "boom" and then saw a very large amount of flames coming from one end of the building. The 18 mechanics were on lunch break at the time and the shop was closed. An adjoining building had ten other employees in it and they witnessed the sudden ignition and called the fire brigade.
Close exposures but all were saved. (Le Parisien)
The fire was knocked down in 45 minutes. There were approx. 70 motorcycles in the workshop at the time, but it is not known how many of them were destroyed.
Update, 10:30 am Pacific: More information and video added. Scroll down.
LOS ANGELES COUNTY FIREFIGHTERS are on the scene of a 2-alarm fire in a Palmdale shopping mall this morning. The fire was discovered around 4 am Pacific and is initially believed to have started in a men's clothing store.
KTLA-TV
Apparently the Fire Command became concerned about the roof or the truss viability because all the firefighters were pulled out of the building after a while and only outside streams are in service. Reports from the scene mention that it seems to have been brought under control around 5:45 am, but that is not official. There are approximately 150 firefighters on the job.
This is still a working fire and no other information is available yet. We should be getting some helicopter video before long and it will be added when we do. KTLA-TV has this early REPORT.
Update, 10:30 am Pacific:
KCBS-TV has filed this video report:
The fire is knocked down, but most of the units are still on the scene working the hot spots. Reports are now saying the the fire that gutted the clothing store extended into a warehouse to the rear which provided the bulk of the fire load. It is not clear what was inside the warehouse or who it belongs to. This is still a working incident.
No one was inside the building when the fire broke out and there were no reports of any injuries.
Arson investigators were at the scene. They were waiting until the building was stable before going inside. "The building was fully involved and the roof had already caved in, so the investigation will be tough," L.A. County Fire Dept. Insp. Bill Riley said.
The store's owner, who did not want to go on camera, said he was completely devastated. He said the store had been open about two weeks, and their grand opening was planned for this weekend.
ONE PERSON IS DEAD AND SEVERAL MORE INJURED, one seriously, from a fire in an 18-story apartment building in Roubaix, France, Monday afternoon. The fire of undetermined origin started in a 2nd-floor apartment and got into the decorative siding on the face of the building. The highly flammable siding burned fast and hot, spreading upward the entire height of the building and penetrating into the residences.
This video shows what the firefighters found as they were arriving:
The fire began at 2:50 pm and brought 105 firefighters to the scene where they had to begin immediate search and rescue operations on all 18 floors. The building has a potential population of 250. Several people were sickened from smoke inhalation and one of them required admission to the hospital in serious condition. Later the body of a man was discovered on one of the upper floors.
La Voix
The fire brigade had the fire knocked down at 4:40 pm, but a long time of mop up carried on.
Reuters
La Voix du Nord has the story and photo gallery HERE.
A FIRE IN THE TOP FLOOR of a 3-story apartment building in Broadview, Illinois, had six people trapped when the firefighters arrived early Monday morning. As the first units pulled in shortly after 1:25 am Central, they saw a crowd of people holding blankets under a window that had fire showing and several residents getting ready to jump out. One was holding an infant and was just about to let it go when the FF's started throwing ladders.
NBC News
They were successful in reaching the six trapped occupants and removed them safely. One of the victims was a man in his 70's who was caught in the smoke-filled stairwell and was led out by the firefighters. He was transported with smoke inhalation problems. The other five people were ok and checked out on the scene.
NBC News reports:
Broadview Fire Chief Thomas Gaertner said four or five people, including two children, were rescued by a ladder.
Gaertner said the blaze in the 2100 block of West 16th Street appears to have started by "unattended cooking." People living in the building said the person who left food on a stove ran around the 12 units and rang all the doorbells to get everyone out in time.
"It was scary, very scary," said resident Sharon Goins. "Neighbors were holding open a blanket ready to catch the baby until the firemen arrived with their ladders."
Firefighters went into the burning building to rescue a handicapped man on the third floor. The man was taken to Loyola University Medical Center, where his condition is unknown.
WLS-TV has some fire footage in this video report:
Winner of Spain Formula 1 race, may be related to the KERS energy system.
Shortly after winning today's Formula 1 race in Barcelona, Spain, a fire erupted in the Williams garage.
Sky Sports document the early moments, from Alpha side:
Extensive damage is caused as a fire breaks out at the back of the Williams team garage after they celebrated winning the Spanish Formula One Grand Prix at the Circuit de Catalunya on May 13, 2012 in Barcelona, Spain.
Sixteen people were injured when a fire broke out in the Williams team garage at the Spanish F1 Grand Prix.
"After today's Spanish Grand Prix a fire occurred in the team's garage which originated from the fuel area.
"Four team personnel were injured in the incident and subsequently taken to the medical center. Three are now receiving treatment at local hospitals for their injuries, while the fourth has been released. The team will monitor their condition and ensure they receive the best possible care.
"The team, the fire services and the police are working together to determine the root cause of the fire and an updated statement will be released in due course.
"The Williams F1 Team would like to thank all of the teams and the FIA for their support in today's incident."
BBC Sports report from Charlie side, including the speculation on the KERS energy management system:
Three members of the Williams team were taken to hospital, while four Caterham mechanics were treated at the track's medical unit. A Force India team member was also treated on the site after suffering smoke inhalation
Kinetic Energy Recovery System (KERS)
The acronym KERS stands for Kinetic Energy Recovery System. The device recovers the kinetic energy that is present in the waste heat created by the car’s braking process. It stores that energy and converts it into power that can be called upon to boost acceleration.
There are principally two types of system – battery (electrical) and flywheel (mechanical). Electrical systems use a motor-generator incorporated in the car’s transmission which converts mechanical energy into electrical energy and vice versa. Once the energy has been harnessed, it is stored in a battery and released when required.
Mechanical systems capture braking energy and use it to turn a small flywheel which can spin at up to 80,000 rpm. When extra power is required, the flywheel is connected to the car’s rear wheels. In contrast to an electrical KERS, the mechanical energy doesn’t change state and is therefore more efficient.
THE TINY, OLD-WEST TOWN OF MARIPOSA, CALIFORNIA (Pop. 2,200), is best known as one of the gateways to the Yosemite National Park, seeing thousands of visitors passing through on their way to the park. Friday night a fire started in a large 90-yr.-old building currently used as a restaurant and within minutes it had spread through an entire row of six other shops along the block of 5th Street. The entire row was one building that had been added onto many times since the original portion was constructed in 1920. It covered 9,000 sq. ft. and had a common attic and basement as well.
Merced Sun-Star photo taken in an early stage of the fire.
The fire began in The Pizza Factory located on the corner of 5th Street and Route 140 around 8:30 pm Friday night when the popular local hangout was packed with customers starting their weekend. The Modesto Bee continues:
It was standing-room only with about 80 people in there," said Luke Willey, co-owner of the Mariposa Pizza Factory. "We ripped the wall down trying to put (the fire) out, but it got into the attic. The building was so old, it went up fast."
Everyone escaped safely, and the crowd watched helplessly as flames spread from one shop to the next.
"I felt the heat (from a block away)," said Sean LaFleur, who lives and works in Mariposa. He described the inferno as "hell on Earth," and he used his iPhone to record the horror. "It gave me nightmares, and I really could not sleep at all (Friday night)."
By dawn, nothing was left of the pizza parlor or the adjacent businesses: Pony Expresso Coffee House & Trading Post, Tracy's Yarns, Larry's Coins, Grace Notes Chimes, the Mariposa County Arts Council Gallery and the Windows on the World bookstore.
KMPH-TV filed this video report:
More than 70 firefighters from Mariposa, Merced, and Madera Counties, plus units from CalFire fought the blaze, mainly concentrating on containment. They did keep it from spreading to a nearby church and other commercial parcels on the street.
THE DENVER FIRE MUSEUM in Colorado saw one of its antique pumpers heavily damaged by an engine fire late last week.
All photos via Denver Fire Museum
The 1953 Seagrave pumper is used for funeral service and is available for hearse duty for any firefighter, active or retired, in the area on request. On May 4 Dan Farley, a retired Denver FD engineer, was driving it and had just returned from a funeral detail. He was still outside on the street getting the truck prepped to be parked back inside the museum when the motor backfired and started a fire in the engine compartment. "The backfire was a real throaty backfire. I expected the worst when I saw the heat rise from the hood," Farley told the press.
As the DFD was being called, Farley and others in the museum grabbed three fire extinguishers and tried to knock the flames down. The fire soon burst one of the radiator hoses and the coolant knocked down a large part of the flames. Engines 1 and 6 responded and finished the job.
The loss will be strongly felt because all of the parts that were damaged are largely unique and will have to be custom fabricated to restore the engine. Their early estimate is for $100,000 in restoration costs.
All photos via Denver Fire Museum
Channel 9 News covered the fire in this video report that includes an interview with Dan Farley:
Farley also stated that when he went to work for Denver FD in 1977, this was the pumper in service at his first assignment, Station 4. The Denver Fire Museum has owned E-4 since 1999.
Visit the Denver Fire Museum WEBSITE HERE.
View the museum's photo gallery of the Eng. 4 fire on their Facebook page HERE.
Update, Saturday morning:Three juveniles arrested on arson charges. Scroll down for details.
A FIRE STARTED DURING CLASS HOURS at the Woodburn High School in Woodburn, Oregon, Friday morning and went to four alarms.
KPTV
The blaze began shortly before 9:30 am Pacific and is still burning at the time of this writing. Some early, but unconfirmed, reports say that it began in a classroom in the woodshop class area. One student told the Salem Statesman-Journal: "We went out like it was a planned fire drill, but when we were told to go to the football field we knew it was real. We’d never done that before."
The school principal told the press that 1,250 students along with 150 teachers and other staff were all evacuated safely. After roll call in the football field, the students were walked to a nearby clinic where their parents would be able to pick them up.
KPTV News posted this raw video taken from their helicopter:
The Woodburn Fire Department was assisted by Aurora, St. Paul, Hubbard, Tualatin Valley and Marion County firefighters. No further information has been made available yet.
Hat tip: Mark Donovan
Update, Saturday morning:
Woodburn Police Dept. detectives announced that they have arrested three 15-yr.-old boys and charged them with 1st-degree arson, reckless burning and reckless endangerment. NWCN is reporting:
As the fire was brought under control investigators learned it was not accidental, according to Detective Sgt. Nick Wilson.
"Detectives were able to take the information and it led them to the arrest of three 15-year-old juveniles, who were students of WHS," Wilson said. They were lodged in the the Marion County Juvenile Detention Center.
All three of the juveniles are students at the school.
It was also announced that the school will be closed all next week and will reopen on the 21st. The fire destroyed the wood and metal shops.
SANTA CLARA, CALIFORNIA, FIREFIGHTERS are finishing up from a 5-alarm fire at a home construction site this morning.
Mercury News
The fire was discovered shortly after 10 pm Pacific Wednesday night at a townhouse construction site near the center of town. The arriving companies found a large fire growing in a row of 3-story homes that were still in the framing-in stage of construction.
The first units on scene instantly realized the fire was significant and called in scores of resources from the San Jose and Santa Clara County fire departments, Kelly said. Their main concern was that the fire would spread to the nearby townhomes that are already built and occupied.
"It was very intense," Kelly said. "It was spreading from one unfinished house to the next. We were very fortunate that there was no wind (Wednesday night). Often times you have the wind and the ambers [sic] will catch other homes on fire."
The FD was able to confine the fire to three units and prevented it from spreading.
Mercury News
It is still early and no determination has been made on the cause.
FOUR PEOPLE WERE INJURED, THREE SERIOUSLY, from a flash fire at a Sinclair oil refinery near Rawlins, Wyoming, Tuesday.
Sinclair Rawlins refinery (Daily Times file photo)
The accident occurred around 10:20 am Mountain inside a gas recovery unit. All four victims were transported to the Carbon County Memorial Hospital and then three of them were flown to a burn center at Greeley, Colorado. They are listed in critical condition.
The fire was quickly isolated and then extinguished. An investigation is underway to find out why it happened.
The Rawlins Times has the STORY.
The Casper Star-Tribune has MORE.
The refinery was founded in 1923 and processes about 80,000 barrels of crude daily into gasoline and diesel fuel.
A FIRE BROKE OUT IN A BUTUAN, PHILIPPINES, CLOTHING STORE Wednesday morning that killed 17 of the 20 or so employees who also live there. The victims, all women, were asleep in the top-floor dormitory of the 3-story building that houses the retail business.
AP / Mascarinas
The fire started just before 4 am local time and burned for five hours. The city of 300,000 has a very limited fire protection service.
Three women managed to dash out of a burning room and groped their way down three floors in darkness but found that the main steel door in the building in downtown Butuan city was locked, police investigator Jonathan Basil said.
Bystanders used a hydraulic car jack to pry open the gate and pulled the three screaming women out from the burning lobby, Basil said.
"The women kept on pounding the hot steel gate while yelling for help," Basil told The Associated Press by telephone, adding that the employee who kept the door key perished in the room upstairs.
Mylene Tulo, one of three who escaped, said she woke up as the fire spread rapidly in the third-floor room where they slept. She managed to dash out with two colleagues. All three sustained minor burns on their arms.
AFP
All 17 victims were burned beyond immediate recognition and the authorities will be seeking dental records and family members for DNA samples to eventually identify those lost. The possibility exists of finding still more vicitms before the day is out.
AP / Mascarinas
The building was originally a theater that has since been partitioned off into several retail shops including the clothing store where the fire started. The cause is unknown and the local official designated to declare that a short circuit started it has not arrived on the scene yet.
BARELY THREE MONTHS AFTER A SIMILAR event, a fire at a drug rehabilitation clinic in Lima, Peru has killed at least 14 patients Saturday.
It has been reported that the fire started around 4 am when one of the patients set a mattress on fire at the Sacred Heart of Jesus Clinic. Police are saying that most of the doors were locked and the window had bars on them preventing vicitms from escaping the blaze. There was one survivor, a 39-yr.-old man who was in a section that had an unbarred window allowing him to jump out.
AFP / CNN
Thirteen bodies were found in 2nd-floor bedrooms and one victim was located on the first floor. It is not unusual for these rehab clinics to lock their patients in because most of then are being held their against their will. Peru has one of the world's highest drug addiction rates and has an estimated 100,000 hard-core drug addicts undergoing clinical treatment. Because of a major shortage of government facilities, most of the drug rehab clinics are run by private, charitable organizations. But most of them are unlicensed and unregulated, often lacking legitimate medical personnel.
On January 28 a near-similar fire in Lima killed 27 patients. Like this fire, it was also started when a patient set fire to a mattress and the doors and windows were all blocked preventing escape. The owner of that clinic was later charged with murder. See the Firegeezer reports HERE and HERE.
A MASSIVE FIRE SWEPT THROUGH a vacant industrial complex in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, Wednesday night.
Carlisle Sentinel
The general alarm fire was in a 25-acre former carpet plant that destroyed two buildings and damaged several others of the dozen in the complex that are all connected.
The fire Wednesday night at a building owned by Carlisle Events was a building being prepared for demolition. A local official told CBS 21 News that a salvage crew had been working inside using an acetylene torch to cut materials.
Carlisle Sentinel
The State Police Fire Marshal and an agent with the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms spent much of Thursday sifting through rubble of a spectacular fire that heavily damaged a former carpet manufacturing plant in Carlisle. The investigators have not yet determined the cause of the blaze.
A security guard spotted the fire shortly after ten o'clock Wednesday night. He and a colleague fled the building and called for help.
At the height of the fire, more than 130 firefighters from 25 companies and five counties were working to extinguish the flames. Destroyed were 100,000 square feet of the 900,000 square foot facility. Small explosions erupted inside intermittently.
WHTM-TV filed this video report Friday morning showing some views of the damaged area:
The fire investigators expect to be on the scene for several days and the say that because of the extent of damage that they may not be able to pinpoint the cause.
Carlisle Sentinel
During the fire through the night into Thursday morning, all of the homes along Fairground Ave. were evacuated.
A FIRE IN A 5-STORY APARTMENT BUILDING in Toulouse, France, Tuesday burned through the stairwell and trapped several people inside the building. The fire started around 11:30 am while most residents were gone but stranded seven residents on the upper floors.
Canal TV
Five of the people went to the roof and waited, hoping that the firefighters would arrive in time to remove them. Two others, a man and a woman were unable to leave their 4th-floor apartment where the fire had started and blocked their exit. They were forced to climb out onto window ledges where they got ready to jump to certain injury or death, but the bystanders yelled encouragement to them to wait for the arrival of the fire brigade.
Canal TV
Sixty-five firefighters responded and were able to initiate quick rescues utilizing an aerial platform to make the saves. This citizen cellphone video captured the rescue of the two on the ledge:
The two people on the ledge suffered burns to their backs and arms, and two others were treated for smoke poisoning at the hospital. The fire destroyed the top two floors and the attic space with collateral damage to the lower floors and a restaurant/bar on the ground floor. The cause is still under investigation.
A quick-thinking passerby doused flames at the entrance of Parkdale United Church in Hintonburg with his morning coffee and a second man joined his effort with a fire extinguisher before fire crews arrived to finish the job.
"They definitely were a factor in slowing it down," said Ottawa Fire Services spokesperson Marc Messier.
The fire started just before 8 a.m. at the main entrance of the church at 429 Parkdale Ave. Crews forced open the wooden doors and broke some of the brick work around its frame to ensure the fire hadn’t spread inside the walls.
CTV News
There was minor smoke damage inside the church as well as water damage to the room located below the entrance, which has been pegged at $20,000.
The cause hasn't been determined for certain yet, but it is not suspicious.
Ryan Pierson (l.) and Steven Brombach manned
the first-in cups at the Parkdale church. (CBC)
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