SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, Aug. 20, 2020 (Gephardt Daily) — Firefighters in Salt Lake City responded a structure fire just after 8 a.m. Thursday, and encountered obstacles including attic construction style, arcing power lines and August heat.
The structure was a house at 635 N. 300 West.
“When we got here, it was an abandoned structure with heavy smoke and flames at the rear of the structure,” Captain Anthony Burton told reporters at the scene.
“It had also moved to an attached garage. They started to aggressively fight that fire, also to search it to make sure we didn’t have any victims even though it was reported abandoned.
“During that fire attack, they had arcing live power lines that was energized and moving, so that delayed some of our forward progress. Those lines had also fallen on a metal fence, so of course that could energize that as well.”
So firefighters withdrew slightly, and continued to fight the interior fire, and searched inside the structure.
They “knocked down the (fire in the) attached garage, knocked down the exterior fire, then we were still battling the fire within the home,” Burton said.
“It had moved into the attic. After about an hour of fighting that fire and cutting holes into the roof to let the hot smoke and fire out of the structure, we’ve now transitioned, it is a second alarm, we’ve transitioned to a defensive fire attack. That’s where we withdraw our personnel to a safe exterior vantage point or attack position, and we start aggressively attacking with big water.”
“Big water” flows at 1,000 gallons per minute, Burton said.
The style of the attic construction created many void spaces.
“That fire just moves around,” the captain said. “It makes it very difficult for us to put out.”
The surrounding roads will be closed, and drivers are asked to find other routes.
Burton said the cause of the fire is under investigation. No injuries have been reported, and firefighters are being rotated in and out to lessen the risk of heat exhaustion.
