COTTONWOOD HEIGHTS, Utah, July 14, 2019 (Gephardt Daily) — Unified Fire Authority crews responded to an early Sunday morning fire at a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints building and arrived to find the structure fully involved.
Keith Garner, public information officer for UFA, told Gephardt Daily a neighbor called 911 at about 2:42 a.m. and said they thought the church, at 3680 E. Brighton Point Drive, was on fire.
“So a crew was dispatched to come in, and they arrived about 2:51 a.m. and saw flames from the roof of the building,” Garner said. Additional units were called at that point, with Murray Fire Department coming to assist. Garner explained that this was a “modified one-alarm fire” because additional units were requested, but a second alarm wasn’t called.
Garner said when firefighters went inside, “the church was completely gone … kind of the foyer area and chapel area.”
He said it took about 45 minutes to get the fire knocked down so that it was completely out, and even then fire crews stayed on scene, checking for hot spots and making sure the fire hadn’t extended into other parts of the building.
There were no injuries as a result of this fire.
Investigators were expected to be at the site well into Sunday morning.
“There’s quite a bit of damage inside, from both smoke and fire,” Garner said. “It looks like it will need to be completely reconstructed.”
The cause of the fire has yet to be determined, although Garner said, “most of the time, with something like this we turn toward human-caused.”
“If anyone saw anything suspicious, give the police a call,” he added.
