A fire that broke out at the Reserve at Collegiate Acres apartment complex in Hagerstown Thursday afternoon could have been much worse if not for the building’s second-floor sprinkler system.
Firefighters from the city and Maugansville responded to the apartment complex on Buckeye Circle at 4:45 p.m. to find the fire-alarm system activated and occupants evacuating the building, according to a Hagerstown Fire Department news release.
Residents reported a fire in the second-floor kitchen apartment, which had been extinguished by the sprinklers. Firefighters verified that the fire was out, shut off the sprinklers and worked to contain the remaining water, the release said.
“This new 28-unit apartment building would most likely have suffered significant damage, displacing much or all of the occupants without the fire sprinkler system,” city Fire Marshal Doug DeHaven said in the release.
“We have had too many large fires recently in the area. Today, we saw the importance of working smoke alarms, which activated alerting the apartment occupants of the fire; the fire sprinkler system, which extinguished a growing fire in the apartment; and the buildings fire alarm that alerted others within the building and notified the fire department,” he said.
The fire marshal’s investigation determined that a pot of grease on the stove caught fire, spreading into the exhaust fan and the above cabinets, the release said.
The occupants of the apartment found the burning pot and attempted to remove it, which activated the sprinklers, the release said.
Wimette’s fire chief is crediting sprinklers for keeping a Tuesday storage room fire at the Wilmette public works garage from potentially engulfing the entire building. The garage at 711 Laramie Ave. in west Wilmette sustained an estimated $15,000 damage in the incident, which was called in as an alarm shortly after 2:30 p.m. Tuesday, according to Fire Chief Mike McGreal, but the cost could have gone much higher, he said Sept. 7.
He praised village administrators and fire prevention bureau officials who decided a little over eight years ago, at the time the village added an addition to the public works building, to retrofit the garage with a sprinkler system.
“They didn’t have to, but they had the forethought to do it,” McGreal said. “That is a multimillion dollar facility, plus the vehicles in the garage that are very expensive, and very difficult to replace. In minutes, this could have been a total loss if there hadn’t been a sprinkler system.”
Had flames from the storeroom not been dampened by sprinklers, they could have spread to the building’s wooden roof, he said. The 15,400-square-foot public works garage houses most of the village’s public works vehicles and equipment, including front end loaders, back hoes, dump trucks and sewer vac trucks, he said. Wilmette’s daily public works services would have suffered significant problems if that equipment had been lost in a fire, he said.
McGreal said fire crews that responded to the alarm found the sprinklers in use and smoke coming out the garage’s main bay. They upgraded the alarm, which called in help from the Winnetka, Northfield, Evanston, Glenview, Skokie, Morton Grove and Highland Park fire departments. However, fire crews found most of the fire under control in a storage room used by the village’s sewer department, where it appeared to have started, he said. Crews put out the remaining flames, and the incident was cleared by 4:15 p.m.
There were no injuries, Engineering and Public Works Director Brigitte Berger said Tuesday. Investigators are still trying to determine what caused the fire, McGreal said. “All’s well that ends well,” McGreal said. “They’re back in business and they’re cleaning it up now.”
Reporting on lives and property saved by fire sprinklers
