WEST VALLEY CITY, Utah, Oct. 15, 2016 (Gephardt Daily) — Three agencies worked together to knock down a business fire Saturday afternoon in West Valley City.
Battalion Chief Bob Fitzgerald, West Valley City Fire Department, said his agency, along with the Salt Lake City Fire Department and the South Salt Lake Fire Department arrived after a call came to dispatch at about 3 p.m. The fire was in the area of 3300 West and Parkway Boulevard.
“We got a call of an explosion, actually, is how the call came in,” Fitzgerald said. “When we arrived, there was a generator unit that was on fire. The explosion was probably the tires of the unit. We did an initial quick attack on that, an offensive attack, to knock that fire down.”
The garage doors appeared burned, so firefighters opened them and found fire inside, which did not extend very far into the building, Fitzgerald said. Officials extinguished that fire, and one they found after seeing smoke flowing from the roof on the west side of the building.
Fitzgerald said it looks like the generator fire was the probable cause, but the investigation will consider all the evidence. The building suffered as estimated $20,000 in damages, he said.
Another fire was reported at the building a few weeks ago, when oily rags caught fire.
“It looks like its totally unrelated, but we want to make sure we eliminated all the possible causes that are there.”
Jim Wilcox, who purchased the building while the current construction business had an ongoing lease, said he happened to be driving by when he saw the smoke coming from his property.
“I was talking to him recently about him doing things in there he wasn’t supposed to,” Wilcox said. “He said, ‘Well, the last owner was more lenient.’… There are going to be some changes around here.”
