Crews responded to a fire Thursday morning at The Palms Theatres & IMAX in Waukee.
Fire chief Clint Robinson told KCCI towels caught on fire in a mechanical room around 8 a.m. and triggered sprinklers at the complex, located at 200 NE Westgate Dr.
An employee on the scene said they don’t believe the fire caused any structural damage, but there is some smoke and water damage. They expected to reopen Thursday afternoon.
A straw bale fire damaged a grocery store in Forsyth. The Country Mart store temporarily closed.
Firefighters responded to the grocery store on Tuesday at 3:15 a.m. Investigators say the fire started in the straw bales outside the store. The fire spread into the store. The sprinkler system knocked down the fire. An employee inside the store called 911. Forsyth Fire Chief Nathan Bower says whether it’s your home or your store, you need to be careful about how you’re storing hay and straw.
“Watch where you put them things close to outlets, candles, extension cords,” said Bower. “And obviously bulk items like this they shoot really shouldn’t be stored next to whether it’s a store or whether your house, they should be stored away from it, because if they do accidentally catch on fire, at least they’re burning outside of that versus next to a structure.”
Frequent shoppers like Jovita Dublin worry they must travel farther for groceries.
“When we noticed that there had been a fire here, I couldn’t believe it,” said Dublin. “It’s hard. Like for us, you know, like my husband, he’s got problems, and he can’t drive that far. “
It took 22 firefighters from three departments to work the four-and-a-half-hour fire. The Missouri State Fire Marshal’s Office is investigating.
Store management is working with the health department to reopen the store. The drive-thru pharmacy remains open.
Around 8:00 a.m., firefighters were called to El Rosal Restaurant in the 3100 block of West
Noble Avenue for a fire alarm.
Once on scene, officials say crews made entry to the restaurant and discovered smoke inside.
Officials say the fire was found in the attic and was contained by the sprinkler system.
There was also a report of a person on the roof, but nobody was found.
No injuries were reported and officials say the cause of the fire is under investigation
Ten people have been displaced by a fire at a long-term care home in Gatineau overnight.
Gatineau fire crews responded to CHSLD Lionel-Émond just before 2 a.m. and confirmed a fire in a storage room on the fourth floor.
Twenty five people from the third and fourth floors were safely evacuated from the building and there are no injuries reported.
The fire was under control around 2:45 a.m. largely due to the automatic sprinkler system in the building.
Ten people were relocated to the Hull Hospital due to fire and water damage to their units.
Damage to the building is pegged around $170,000.
The fire was confined to a common area near the entrance to the mansion, according to the Winona Police Department.
The fire, which required off-duty firefighters to be called for assistance, resulted in minor fire, smoke and water damage to the building.
The fire did not result in any injuries, but the department reported one resident had to be assisted in evacuating the building by firefighters.
The residents of the mansion are being assisted by the Red Cross to find new housing.
The cause of the fire remains under investigation.
The mansion was sold earlier this year to the Kappa Chi Fraternity for $1.85 million, over double the estimated market value of the mansion, according to Winona County’s commercial sale records.
Kappa Chi chapter president Creighton Butler said that the fraternity has not moved into the mansion yet and the residents had leases from before the purchase of the property.
He said the sprinkler system activated and helped contain the fire to the common space. The building’s fire alarm system automatically reported the blaze to the Winona Fire Department.
Butler said there was “a lot to be figured out still” for the fraternity regarding its plans to move into the mansion.
The mansion, built in 1857 by one of Winona’s founders, Henry Huff, has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1976.
Chief Ken Fickett says his firefighters were called to Upton Hastings Hall at roughly 2:07 a.m., as students were being evacuated from the four-story dormitory.
The chief says the fire was determined to have started in a closet on the third floor, but was thankfully contained by the floor’s sprinkler system.
This latest incident comes a week after a fire on Monday, Sept. 25, in which a lithium battery from a vape pen was determined to have caused a fire in a trash can on the same floor of Upton Hastings Hall. No injuries were reported in either fire.
In that incident, 23 students were temporarily relocated.
In the latest incident, University of Southern Maine officials say 47 students from two floors are being temporarily relocated due to the damage from the fire sprinkler system, which activated immediately.
This week, there was no damage reported from the fire itself, though the cause is still being investigated.
“Details are still emerging,” wrote USM’s public affairs officer Dan Hartill. “For now, our focus is on the wellbeing of our students.”
A business has some damage after an overnight fire in Lexington.
Flames broke out after 11 p.m. at the Aramark building on Versailles Road.
Crews arrived quickly and crawled under the smoke to put out the flames.
District Fire Chief Brian Dawson says the fire started in some clothing bins inside the building.
“The sprinkler heads in the building kept the fire in check, but it didn’t completely put the fire out,” Dawson said. “We had about 10 units responding to the fire and the Jonas Brothers’ concert slowed one of them down, but they were still on scene within five minutes of the initial fire.”
Dawson says the fire damaged some items in the building, but the structure is sound and no one was hurt.
One person was in the building when the fire started.
Investigators are still determining the origin and cause.
In a letter to students, USM’s President says the sprinkler system at the Upton/Hastings residence hall kept the fire from spreading. However, water damage forced 23 students living there to be relocated.
No one was injured in the fire that started on the third floor of Upton/Hastings around 2 p.m. Because the fire was a state academic building, the fire was investigated by the state fire marshal’s office.
The president’s office reminds students that USM is a smoke & vape free campus.
Lithium batteries can cause fires if the battery is damaged. The smoke and fumes from a lithium battery fire can be fatal.
The fire started in one of the HVAC units in the basement of the facility at 7000 West Grandbridge Boulevard, prompting an evacuation of the center on September 22, 2023.
The building was evacuated, and firefighters entered the building to find the rapid activation of the sprinkler system confined the fire to the unit.
Crews shut down the sprinkler system to minimize water damage and the facility was able to reopen a short time after the incident.
Fire Chief Michael says the incident is an excellent example of the important role sprinklers play in both the protection of life and property.
According to the National Fire Protection Association, “From 2015 to 2019, sprinklers operated in 92 percent of fires large enough to activate sprinklers and were effective at controlling the fire in 96 percent of the incidents in which they operated.”
According to officials with Murfreesboro Fire-Rescue, the sprinkler system worked perfectly, and it came on and put-out the fire.
Firefighters used fans to clear smoke from the building.
