May 27--On Memorial Day, a two-alarm fire next to an east Allentown cemetery speckled with American flags destroyed a small business and injured a city firefighter.
Fire Capt. John Christopher said a firefighter was pulled from the blaze. Paramedics kept the man under observation, but later determined he was OK.
The ruins of the business, RDM Enterprises, at 1302 N. Irving St., near American Parkway, will need to be demolished, said owner Feimin Fann of Bethlehem.
Late Monday afternoon, Fann stood and watched the flames and black smoke billow from the squat, cinder-block building. The smoke blew across the street and buried Woodlawn Memorial Park in fog.
Hours before, the cemetery had hosted a service for veterans. Red, white and blue banners that mourners had installed at the markers disappeared in the blackness.
"I don't know what we're going to do," Fann said.
He and his family moved to Bethlehem from Thailand 37 years ago. He bought the business 15 years ago.
RDM manufactures accessories for stringed musical instruments, including Brazilian resin, which musicians rub onto strings to create friction.
Fann was unsure what caused the fire. He said the building was old, having housed a business for 53 years.
Christopher said firefighters responded to Fairmont and Irving streets around 4 p.m. in response to a complaint of smoke.
Around that time, Elizabeth Thompson of Tannersville was visiting the cemetery. Thompson is a geocacher, a sort of modern-day treasure hunter, who uses a GPS device to locate boxes full of items hidden in various places by other geocachers.
Thompson had learned online that there were two caches at Woodlawn Memorial Park. She'd just found one near the center of the cemetery -- a small box full of little trinkets. She signed the log book and noticed smoke billowing out of a building across the street.
She dialed 911. The dispatcher asked if she knew the exact address.
"You can't miss it," she said.
Soon, the cemetery was filled with gawkers, many coughing and rubbing reddened eyes from the smoke. Police tied yellow tape to the trees and utility poles at the edge of Irving Street to keep the small knot of onlookers on the grass.
Among them was Mark Pitkoff. He said he is brother-in-law to the owner of the business next door to RDM, Consolidated Carpet Mills. Pitkoff said the family was having a Memorial Day picnic when they learned their fire alarm was going off.
Christopher said a fire alarm in the carpet business, not RDM, is what alerted them to the smoke. The flames were contained to RDM, Christopher said, though both buildings were heavily engulfed in smoke.
"Mostly," Fann said, "I feel bad for my neighbor."
By 6 p.m., the fire still wasn't extinguished, though the flame and smoke had greatly diminished. The crowd slowly moved back to the cars they'd parked in the cemetery.
Woodlawn Memorial Park owner Lisa Snyder stood at the police tape and offered bottles of water to firefighters and onlookers. Earlier, she'd hosted activities for Memorial Day in the long grass and under the shade trees of her business. When the fire started, she'd been helping a family arrange a funeral on the grounds.
She watched the men and women in yellow uniforms milling about in the haze.
"It's almost fitting," she said, "that it's Memorial Day."
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