When firefighters arrived at the Walgreens at 2615 Burnsed Blvd. near the Sumter County Service Center in Wildwood, they discovered a small electrical fire that had triggered some of the sprinklers inside the store. The staff had evacuated into the parking lot and firefighters completed a thorough search and inspection of the building.
An employee said the store had remained open Wednesday after the incident was over and was able to reopen Thursday with normal business hours.
Several tenants had already self-evacuated advising firefighters that a garage on the lower level was on fire. Crews quickly located the two-car garage, which was filled with smoke. Fortunately, the building is equipped with an automatic sprinkler system which properly activated a single sprinkler head in the garage area, extinguishing the fire before it was able to spread. All property, including two vehicles that were parked inside of the garage, were undamaged from the fire.
Bullhead City Fire Department attributes the working automatic sprinkler systems to saving lives and property. Because of the location of this fire, it could have very easily extended into the living spaces of the apartments above, causing extensive damage to both lives and property.
No injuries were reported from this incident and the cause of the fire remains under investigation at this time.
Investigators were asked to assist Cypress Creek Fire Department with a fire at Pho X Trang on Monday in the 21500 block of SH 249.
There were a couple of lessons learned from this incident.
The fire was ruled an accident and there were no injuries reported.
As crews arrived, apartment residents were already evacuating the 11 story building and told firefighters the blaze was on the eighth floor. A total of 25 AFR units responded to the scene and crews initiated evacuation and fire suppression efforts.
AFR states the building’s fire sprinkler suppression system had put out the fire before crews arrived. A woman who had suffered injuries from the fire was found near the stairwell on the eighth floor by crews.
She was rescued and taken to the hospital. Her condition is unknown. There were no other injuries to residents or fire personnel. Eighteen residents have been displaced as a result of the fire.
The blaze was contained to a single apartment unit. The cause of the fire is under investigation at this time.
A man at Temple University Hospital’s Episcopal Campus barricaded himself in a room in the emergency department and set fire to bed sheets, but no one was injured.
Police said hospital security searched the 30- to 40-year-old man at about 2:40 p.m. Saturday and placed him in a room. The man was there to receive drug treatment. Police said he barricaded himself inside and turned on oxygen tanks, then lit the bed sheets on fire.
Police said a maintenance man broke a window and the man climbed out and fought with security, but police arrived and arrested him. The emergency room was evacuated with no injuries. The blaze was extinguished and the fire marshal declared it an arson.
A spokeswoman for Temple Health said the building’s sprinkler system extinguished the fire. Patients in the ER were transported to Temple University Hospital’s Main Campus, she added. The hospital will continue sending ER patients there until the Episcopal ER can reopen.
Police said the emergency room will remain closed until repairs are completed.
Firefighters responded to a fire alarm at the home, Nick Hill of the RBC Fire Department said in a press release, and while en route, they received an update that a heat/smoke alarm and a sprinkler system at the home had activated.
Rainbow City Dispatch told firefighters a caller said grease had boiled out of a pot onto a stove, starting the fire.
“Upon arriving on scene we found smoke exiting the structure,” Hill said. Crews went to work to locate anyone who might be in the structure and to battle the blaze, he said.
“Search and Rescue crews found that there was a bed-bound subject within the home,” Hill said. That person was safely brought out of the home.
Fire fighting crews found a small fire on the stove in the kitchen, he said, but thanks to the activation of the sprinkler system, there was minimal damage.
“What fire remained was still burning due to the stove hood blocking the water from the sprinkler,” Hill explained. The fire was extinguished with a dry chemical extinguisher, and crews checked for fire extension into the walls and cabinets.
They found no evidence the fire had spread further.
All occupants in the residence were accounted for and safe, Hill said. Property owners and managers were looking into finding a place to move the occupants until the residence was repaired.
The outcome of this incident, Hill said, can be greatly attributed to the working smoke/heat alarms and the properly working sprinkler system.
Rainbow City Fire Rescue has a smoke alarm installation program to install smoke alarms in the homes in Rainbow City at no charge to the residential property owner, he said.
“This is a program provided by anonymous donors at a state level, ‘Get Alarmed Alabama!’ and ‘The Alabama Fire College,’” he explained.
For any questions about the smoke alarm installation program contact Rainbow City Fire Rescue at (256) 442-2511.
The fire started just after 8 p.m. in the 16-story Wilder Park senior high-rise a few blocks from the junction of Interstate 35E and Ayd Mill Road.
Resident Diane Welch said she could hear the fire burning right above her 10th-floor unit as alarms sounded.
“And I knew things were crumbling, because I could hear it in the walls, like if you put sand through a sifter,” she said.
Deputy Fire Chief Roy Mokosso said that more than 60 firefighters responded to fight the fire and evacuate residents. Paramedics stood by and St. Paul police helped search the building and get residents into waiting buses.
Some residents who could not use the stairs were left in place, due to what the building’s governing board told residents was serious damage to the elevators.
Mokosso said at least some areas in the building had sprinklers and the system had activated. Fire investigators were at the scene on Monday night, trying to determine the cause of the fire.
A high-rise fire at a Minneapolis Public Housing building without sprinklers killed five people in November.
The office of Overwatch Imaging and the Kobe Sushi + Bar were also damaged. The building is located on Nichols Parkway on the waterfront just east of Second Street near downtown Hood River.
The fire was extinguished by a sprinkler system that prevented any further fire damage, according to Damian.
“Most importantly, nobody was hurt and all patient files are secure,” said Christina McManigal, chief ambulatory operations officer at MCMC. “We are currently assessing the damage, but we do know that the Nichols Landing building will remain closed for restoration. It is too soon to know if the closure will last a few weeks or several months.”
All MCMC clinics and the hospital in The Dalles are open. MCMC’s Hood River-based providers have been seeing patients in The Dalles throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and will continue to do so while the Nichols Landing building is restored.
At 2:15 a.m., Hood River Fire & EMS crews responded to a water flow alarm at the MCMC building, in the 30 block of Nichols Parkway in Hood River.
“We were dispatched to a water flow alarm, a fire alarm that tells us possibly that a sprinkler system may be activated,” said Lt. Tony DePinto, who was first on the scene.
DePinto said that when HRFD firefighters arrived, they found the fire alarm system had activated along with smoke and a small fire on the third floor inside the building. Fortunately, two sprinkler heads had extinguished the fire before it had extended any further. Firefighters shut off the water flow, searched the building, determined the extent of damage, and ventilated the building to clear the smoke. Fire crews were able to remove smoke from the building and covered computers on the first and second floors to prevent any further damage from the water. MCMC medical scanning equipment was also protected from damage, according to Damian.
Hood River Fire & EMS was assisted by units from West Side Fire District, Wy’East Fire District, and Cascade Locks Fire Department.
The cause of the fire is presently under investigation.
“The fire sprinkler system activation prevented the building and its contents from significant damage and contained the fire as designed. Because of the small size of the fire, crews were able to concentrate on removing smoke and water from the building and protecting sensitive equipment from water damage, further reducing the damage from this fire. Had the building not been equipped with fire sprinklers, the fire would’ve easily grown in size, causing major damage to the building and its contents,” Damian stated.