We responded to two garage fires over the weekend of New Years Eve while most people were celebrating the holidays…the first one was early morning New Years Eve on Highway JJ, north of Stanton a few miles. Dispatch informed us en route that the owner of the residence was trying to enter the garage to save forty cats believed to be inside the building. I was passed by a Franklin County deputy just north of Stanton and we both arrived a few minutes later, ahead of the trucks, to find the building fully engulfed in flames…
…I was standing behind the building when I shot this one, and it looked like fireworks going off, where the electrical connection comes in the roofline on the northwest corner of the building…I walked back up to flag down the first arriving crews, after the neighbors informed me there was no drive or easy access for the trucks from the highway…meaning a longer lay of hoselines to the fire building from the trucks..I shot the next photos from the front of the building….
…the next photos show the east side of the building fully engulfed in heavy fire and the tree and a tall stepladder burning from the radiant heat produced by the intense fire as well…it was a good thing the deputy arrived early and pulled the woman back from the garage to prevent her from entering it….
…in the next photo you can see the building well involved and firefighters Damon Sumpter and Nolan Crawford untangling the hoselines from the hosepack they carried down after handjacking the two and a half inch hoseline from the pumper out on Highway JJ to the back of the residence…..
They attached two separate lines of inch and three quarter with a wye to the two and a half inch line, to make their attack to the fire, Nolan approaching from the uphill west side and Damon from the downhill east side…here Nolan stretches his line around to make his approach from the west side….
…as Damon starts his approach from the east side, dousing down the debris burning on the east wall of the building…
In the next photo, Nolan approaches from the west side and as he and Damon approach the building, fireworks again erupt from the back side of the garage, where the electrical lines enter the building…
…Nolan made a slight adjustment, and moved to the right a few feet and directed his nozzle to the front of the building and kept on coming….
…a few minutes later, Nolan received some backup on his line from Chris, and while they doused down the west wall of the garage, Damon turned his attention to the burning tree on his right…
…then they moved in closer to the building and began hitting the deeply seated fire burning within….
…and right up to the garage door and window of the front wall….
…and then the front wall at the southeast corner collapsed, taking the southwest corner down with it…
…by this time, more firefighters and a crew of Junior Firefighters, showed up to help with the total extinguishment and mop up efforts….
…and then after the fire was out, hoselines had to be picked up and the tanker drop tank drained and put back on the truck as well….
