Gainesville —
Sunday’s “five-alarm fire” on South Wine Street drew response from three cities.
Gainesville Fire Department Assistant Chief Wally Cox said a structure fire at 811 S. Wine St., cause still unknown, spread embers to nearby yards and radiated enough heat to singe another residence.
The houses were unoccupied and no residents were injuried. But one house fire had soon become two, and nearly 40 officers from Gainesville, Lindsay and Oak Ridge departments arrived on scene.
“We had to fight the grass fires to the north, and the structure fire to the south, to keep it from spreading any further,” Cox said.
Cox said the alarm time was 12:46 p.m. and firefighters were on the scene until nearly 3:30 p.m. The day’s heat and lack of moisture escalated the status of the incident to “five-alarm.”
A firefighter suffered a burn on his foot, Cox said — but the chief risk factor was the weather itself. One of his department vehicles served as an “incident command trailer,” with fluids and wet towels standing by.
“With this kind of heat you have to rotate them out every 20 minutes or so,” he said about his crew. “It makes it hard on everybody because after the guys put on all their equipment, all their gear, they have no way to escape. We have to rotate them out every 15 to 20 minutes because if you let them get overheated it’s too hard for them to recover.”
Cox added the department’s drinking water supply ran low on the scene rather quickly. Seeing this, nearby residents brought them more.
“I don’t know who they were, they were unknown citizens,” he said. “But they brought water to us and that really helps us out. When people respond like that, out of the goodness of their heart, that really helps us out and we appreciate that.”
Local News
Related Photos
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A house fire at 811 S. Wine Street threw embers into nearby yards and radiated enough heat to damage another nearby home. No injuries to residents were reported, though officers from Gainesville and Lindsay fire departments spent nearly three hours at the scene dealing with the flames. Photo by Stephen Monahan
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