Smoke Observed From The North Side Today

[Peggy Gurney]

HA yep I did.  I corrected it above.

Blame it on lack of sleep!

[Towntalk]

Don't you mean YFD?

[Peggy Gurney]

And the fact that the fire was set right at the center of the building made it almost impossible for YFD to get to it.
Whoever set the fire this time knew exactly what they were doing.   

[Towntalk]

You are 100% right joly1584. The first priority for any fire department is the safety of its personal, and whatever structures are near the fire. With three previous fires in a very short period of time, the building was unsafe, so the YFD supervisors on the scene made the right decision.

Fire crews said that a lot of materials including tires inside the building were keeping the blaze burning.

[joly1584]

Should the fire department have put the fire out?

According to reports in The Vindy and WKBN the previous fires had weakened the structure of the building, especially the roof, making it too dangerous for firefighters to go inside to try and put it out.  YFD chose to take a defensive stance by letting the building burn and prevent surrounding areas from catching fire.

[Peggy Gurney]

Well, for one thing, the flames were already through the roof when they arrived on the scene.
Secondly, this is the 3rd times this building has been set fire to.   I read on Vindy.com (or was it wkbn.com, don't remember which) that they tried to call the owner (again) and couldn't locate him.

So MY guess is (and it's only an assumption on my part), they decided to let it burn.
If so, I think it was a good decision. It's what I would have done.

[jay]

In the photo above, the YPD didn't appear to be making any attempt to extinguish the fire in the building.  The longer the black smoke rose into the sky, the more people came to see what was happening.

Should the fire department have put the fire out?   

How common is this practice of letting a building burn for hours on end?

[Peggy Gurney]

And darn people held up traffic, and at times, even interfered with the fire crews, because they just had to drive by and see what was happening.

But what ticks me off is that YFD called for officer assistance for traffic and crowd control and it took over 40 minutes for them to dispatch a car. 

40 MINUTES.

Stacey Adger who is a dispatcher at YSUPD heard the call requesting assistance on their radios, and I heard the dispatch from YPD.
40 minutes apart.

I'm getting a bit ticked off with YPD's response time. It SUCKS.

[jay]

This was the fire scene at the corner of Jones Street and Brittain.

[Towntalk]

Automatic Sprinkler Fire Update

This was the third or fourth time this building was on fire in the past few weeks.

[Towntalk]

Youngstown fire crews were called out around 9:45 a.m. Saturday to a vacant structure fire on Brittain Street.

Smoke from the blaze could be seen for miles around the city.  Some residents in New Castle called in to the station to report seeing the black smoke in the sky. 

Neighbors said the building is the old Automatic Sprinkler Corporation.

In May, a neighboring business on Brittain Street, the old RRI tire shredding plant, was heavily damaged by fire.

[jay]

This smoke was visible throughout the Mahoning Valley today.  This photo was taken on Elm Street at Park Avenue.