Afternoon Fire on Weeks Street
Decatur Metro | March 9, 2010 | 9:21 amCSD Mom writes in…
I’m surprised you didn’t post about the big fire over on S. Columbia this afternoon. I should have taken pictures. It was an enormous blaze. I couldn’t tell exactly where it was, but I think it was a formerly residential/now commercial building on S. Columbia between College and Talley. The smoke was tremendous and the blaze was frighteningly huge! It sounded like fireworks for awhile…I think there were numerous small explosions going on. I can’t find anything about it on the news websites although there was a helicopter there.
The DNO reports the fire occurred in a woodworking shop on Weeks Street. Sounds pretty intense.
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I suspect this is the same place I asked about last week: http://twitter.com/carl/statuses/9851990902 and learned the source from Dave: http://twitter.com/davekell/statuses/9876660496 and http://twitter.com/davekell/statuses/9882312943. Obviously this time the fire department call wasn’t a false alarm!
Wow…looks like they have literally been “playing with fire” for a while now!
At the time I didn’t know what building it was, whether a house or commercial building. Turns out it was a small shed, but the explosions caused by (I assume) accelerants in the building caused an enormous fire!
Decatur Wine Dude took a pic of the fire. It can be viewed HERE.
According to an officer on duty at the intersection of E College and S Columbia, the fire was located at the radiator shop on Weeks St.
Decatur Fire Chief Dixon told Decatur News Online that the fire was “on the out structure of 227 Weeks Street.” This is a residential home. Pictures on our Flickr page show what is apparently the owner of the property talking to fire officials next to the radiator shop (Sims Radiator Service Inc.), which is at 223 Weeks and was most definitely not on fire. http://www.decaturnewsonline.com/news/article_158b41e6-2b44-11df-b541-001cc4c03286.html
This was a wood storage shed behind a house owned by Volkmar Wochatz, a carpenter who organized SkaterAid some years ago after his son died of brain cancer. I walked through that shed once. Guess the wood was very dry.
See some photos I took this afternoon at http://bit.ly/WeeksFire.
Unfortunately, the metal shed up the street where I’m told coffee is roasted is still there, so we’ll still smell the smoke at the Corner Pub.