Firefighters face winter weather woes
By: By Meghan Backus
Updated: December 3, 2007
For the second time in less than 24 hours, Gates firefighters extinguished flames at McDonald’s Springs Incorporated, but not without a struggle.
“It’s been very labor intensive,” said Fire Chief Jim Harrington, “we couldn't do it by man power."
Fire officials say the business accidentally caught fire Sunday morning and putting out the flames wasn’t any easier then.
"Sometimes we get frozen water mains, frozen fire hydrants and that can hamper some firefighting efforts, and again that was one of the issues we had (Sunday) morning," Harrington said.
And Mother Nature didn’t back off Monday. She may have even had a hand in reigniting the fire around 5 o’clock in the morning.
“The wind conditions we had were 40 to 45 mph wind gusts overnight, so that's a contributing factor to the incident this morning," Harrington said.
But weather wasn't the only thing up against firefighters. The actual structure of the building posed problems too.
“The problem is the building skeleton is all wood frame,” Harrington said, “but the outer sheeting on both the interior and exterior is steel, so we've got fire burning in between the walls."
Crews eventually brought the fire under control a couple hours after it started Monday morning, and a section of the building where it was most heavily damaged was torn down.
It was around that time when fire officials noticed fuel spills and called in a hazardous materials crew to clean up.
“The volume of petroleum product that had been in the building - what's happened is some of the containers were plastic and they ruptured and melted,” Harrington said.
The petroleum did not cause problems for any of the surrounding businesses in
McDonald’s Springs makes springs and suspension systems for tractor trailers and dump trucks. An employee tells News 8 about six people work there. There’s no word from the owner on whether he will rebuild the business.
