Deputy Salem Police Chief Tyler Rose told the Salem City Council Monday night that the Saturday fire in the mechanical bay at the police station could have been much worse.
The fire started when an electric pressure washer caught fire. Smoke and a smoke alarm alerted the telecommunicator to the fire. Salem Emergency Management Agency Coordinator Andrew Strong worked with first arriving firemen for a quick knockdown.
Rose says a nearby fuel tank for a generator in the room was close to being involved.
“There was fire damage to the controller on top of the generator,” Rose said. “It melted some of the front of it, so we’re definitely going to have to replace that part, but when we opened up the internals it appears to be intact, so there is not nearly as much damage as there could have been. There is, I would estimate, about a 40-gallon diesel fuel tank that is plumb to the generator, and if the fire had gone any longer it would have probably chewed through that line, which would have added fuel to that fire, making it much worse than what it was.”
Rose says they are working on a temporary solution so that the police building continues to have access to emergency power.
“We’ve got the EMA portable generator that emergency management got pulled over there for us. Once we get that wired in, that will be a backup to our current situation. If we were to lose power, we could go back and manually start that generator and run off of it for a period of time until they get power back up, until we can get the parts for the generator.”
The generator also provides backup power to the 9-1-1 system that is based in Salem.
