Residents of an Osoyoos retirement home will begin returning to their rooms today, following their evacuation Monday night because of a fire in the laundry room. The fire was doused by the building’s sprinkler system, and fire retardant was applied by Osoyoos Fire Department members, who reacted quickly to the alarm.
The blaze erupted about 9:30 p.m. at Mariposa Village, apparently because of an overheated clothes dryer on the second floor of the care facility. Acting facility manager Jesse Sales said 26 residents were taken from their rooms and moved “behind the fire walls” as soon as the alarm was sounded. They were accommodated overnight in other rooms at the seniors’ home.
One resident and one staff member were taken to South Okanagan Regional Hospital in Oliver Tuesday night. They were treated and released and were back “in a couple of hours,” Sales said. “They (the fire department) got here before I did,” said Sales, “and I was here in about 15 minutes.”
Will McKay, managing partner of the Baybridge-Baltic ownership group, also had high praise for the volunteer fire department. “They were Johnny on the spot. … They did a wonderful job for us,” he said.
Sales said most of the residents would be back in their rooms today. For any whose rooms are not ready for re-occupancy, alternative accommodation has been arranged, he said. The care facility is home to 109 residents, plus staff.
The government center at 200 East Main Street in downtown Lexington was closed Monday because of an electrical fire late Sunday night in an adjoining parking garage. The parking garage sprinkler system, which was triggered by the fire, helped to contain the blaze which blaze broke out about 11:30 p.m. Sunday in some wiring inside the parking garage.
Firefighters had to turn off electricity in the parking garage, which also caused parts of the government center to lose power, city officials said. With the government building closed, some city employees will not work Monday, said Susan Straub, Mayor Jim Gray’s spokeswoman. The garage is between the Kentucky Theatre and the government building.
Initial indications suggest that the parking garage sustained no structural damage, Straub said. The cause remains unknown, Straub said. Earlier Monday, officials said electrical current arced, and some insulation caught fire. The fire was quickly put out once electrical power in the garage was turned off, fire officials said.
A camp stove fire in an apartment on the corner of Euclid and Livingston avenues set off the sprinkler system in the apartment Sunday night.
A senior in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications who asked not to be identified by name said he was experimenting with a new camp stove in preparation for a camping trip during Spring Break when the flame of the stove escalated beyond its intended height, setting off the sprinkler system. The fire, located in an apartment building at 320 Euclid Ave., was reported just after 9 p.m. Sunday night. The Syracuse Fire Department left the scene just before 9:50 p.m.
The student, who lives on the third floor of the apartment building, said nothing was burnt. He said that when he saw the flame rise, he went to the bathroom sink and extinguished the flame, but the sprinkler system went off.
Syracuse Fire Department District Chief Robert Whitehead said the sprinkler system did exactly what it was supposed to. There was still water in some light fixtures and some electricity was shut off in the building, but that “everything was handled,” he said.
A National Grid van came to the scene around 9:30 p.m. and remained at the scene past 10 p.m. Chelcie Pellegrino, a senior communication and rhetorical studies major who lives in the apartment building, said she was inside when the fire started, but said she did not hear an alarm. Pellegrino said she heard fire trucks come to the scene and heard people running up the stairs of the building. She added that if she was not able to stay in her apartment tonight, she had friends who lived on Livingston.
A fire in a southeast Bend industrial park Thursday night caused $30,000 damage to a welding shop, but likely would have been far more severe and spread to adjoining businesses if a sprinkler system and fire alarm hadn’t kicked in, officials said.
Firefighters responded around 9:40 p.m. to a fire alarm sounding at Wilson Warehouses, a multi-tenant industrial complex at 1310 SE Armour Road, said Deputy Fire Marshal Cindy Kettering. They arrived to find the fire in a welding shop, confined to a single tenant in Suites 13 and 14 of the building. Losses were estimated at $15,000 to the building and $15,000 to the contents.
The fire was found to be accidental in nature, Kettering said later Friday, but an exact cause could not be determined. The fire official said damage to the business “would have been far more severe were it not for the fact that the building is equipped with a full fire sprinkler system,” which “held the fire in check until fire crews arrived” and finished putting it out.
The sprinkler head activation also triggered the fire alarm, leading to a quicker dispatch of crews, Kettering said, noting that having occurred at night, it could have been “a considerable amount of time before the fire was discovered.”
“Without a doubt, working fire sprinkler systems and fire alarm systems saved this business,” she said.
Reporting on lives and property saved by fire sprinklers
