Salem Assistant Fire Chief Bill Fulton says two observant girls may have prevented a large downtown fire Sunday night as they spotted a fire burning out one of the back doors of Steve’s Antiques at 120 South Washington at the East Main Street intersection.
Fulton says as a result of the fire being spotted early they were able to put it out quickly.
“We had a couple of young people show up at our fire station saying they had a fire in the back of a building in the 200 block of East Main. When we got here we had fire showing from the rear of Steve’s Antiques. The first truck was the initial knockdown on it and then we took out a door and found we had fire in an elevator shaft extended up through the 2nd story. We got that all knocked down. We checked all 3 floors and found we were comfortable with that, and we were just real lucky.”
Fulton says they used an aerial truck to examine the upper stories of the building, knocking out a couple of wooden window coverings to look inside to make sure no other fire was present. Smoke did fill the entire building, but the extent of the damage was not immediately known.
With the fear that the fire had spread through the building, multiple fire departments were called for mutual aid. Most remained on standby as the search for further fire was underway. Fire departments on the scene were Kell, Centralia Fire Protection District, Odin, Kinmundy-Alma, Sandoval, Mt. Vernon, and Iuka Firemen.
The father of one of the girls, fifth grader Ayla Crawford, said she and her friend London Robbers had just returned from Walmart with Crawford’s mother and spotted the fire. Luke Crawford says since their phones were dead the two ran the three blocks to the fire station to report the blaze. Crawford lives in an apartment on East Main Street.
The fire was first discovered at 9:23 Sunday night. All but Salem and Kell Firemen cleared the scene by 11:15 pm. Salem and Kell firemen continued to monitor the situation until shortly after midnight.
Firemen worked at the rear of the Steve’s Antique building where the Sunday fire began to determine if it had spread beyond the elevator shaft. Photo by Bruce Kropp.
Salem Firemen used their aerial truck to check for fire in the upper stories of the Steve’s Antiques building after quickly extinguishing a small fire. Photo by Bruce Kropp.
