By: Jeremy D. Wells
Carter County Times
According to Grayson code enforcement officer Joe Hammer, he called in last week’s fire at the Shangri-La building on his radio at 10:43 a.m. Less than five minutes later, at 10:47, the first truck was on scene and battling the blaze.
“That’s fast,” Hammer noted, in what might just be a contender for understatement of the year.
Part of the reason for that fast response is the proximity of the fire station to the location of the fire. But being close to the fire isn’t enough. You have to have folks available to respond. That, fire chief Greg Felty explained, is where the city’s paid fire crew comes in.
“The day crew really made a difference,” Felty said.
The fire, he said, started in a back apartment. The immediate cause of the fire is still unknown at this time, Felty continued, and the investigation by the fire marshal is still ongoing. But because Grayson’s day crew were able to respond so quickly, they were able to keep the fire from spreading to neighboring structures.
“It would have been a lot worse without them,” Felty noted.
He said they try their best to have three to four firefighters on the payroll from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. each day – when it’s more difficult for volunteer firefighters with day jobs to respond quickly – and they’ve made a huge difference.
This crew, for instance, was able to begin containing the fire until other volunteer crews could respond.
Firefighters from the Olive Hill, Norton Branch, Hitchins, Webbville, and Canonsburg fire departments (Canonsburg also has a day crew, Felty noted) responded to the call as well, helping the Grayson crews extinguish the blaze, but the stretch of US 60 between Prichard Elementary and the Raider’s Mart remained closed to traffic into the early afternoon.
Calls to the reported owners of property were still unanswered at press time.
Contact the writer at editor@cartercountytimes.com
