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Small fire strikes PA fire company
Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News (July 24, 2008)Jul. 24--SHAMOKIN -- It was a fire in a firehouse, put out by the chief of police.
Chief John Brown stood in an outside doorway to the kitchen of the Rescue Fire Company Grill on Wednesday afternoon, sink hose in hand, soaking a flaming pile of bar towels lying outside on the macadam.
The towels had been pulled from inside a storage closet in the bar area, according to fire officials. When the flames had been extinguished, a firefighter walked over with an extinguisher, giving the blackened rags a blast for good measure.
"It puts (the fire) out," Brown said of his improvisation with the kitchen hose.
A bartender walked into the Rescue Fire Co. Grill sometime after noon Wednesday to find the bar area filled with smoke, according to Shamokin Assistant Fire Chief Jim Catino. The assistant chief didn't know the woman's name.
The smoke, it turned out, was pouring out of a storage closet, where the towels were on fire. The cause of the fire was still undetermined, Catino said.
There was very little damage from the fire, just a bit of charring on a piece of paneling, he noted. In fact, the only things disturbed during the course of the fire was a set of shelves that had been pushed out of the way and four bottles of chemicals a firefighter had removed as a precaution.
The building, though, was full of heavy smoke, Catino noted. Crews used positive pressure fans to clear the building. The fans, which pull clean air into a building rather than push smoke out, are more efficient than exhaust fans, the assistant chief said.
"(Exhaust fans) went out about 20 years ago," Catino said.
Crews from Independence and Liberty fire companies responded, as well as AREA Services and the Shamokin Police Department.
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Copyright (c) 2008, The News-Item, Shamokin, Pa.
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