PA Crews Maintain Social Distance at Warehouse Blaze
By Sarah M. Wojcik
Source The Morning Call (Allentown, Pa.)
High winds toppled a heating and air conditioning unit on the roof of an unfinished warehouse in Allen Township, sparking a roof fire that required multiple agencies and five ladder trucks to bring under control Friday morning, the township fire chief said.
Allen Township Fire Chief Dale Hassler said crews worked fast to extinguish the roof fire before it could spread elsewhere in the massive 1 million-square foot warehouse that’s under construction in the 1000 block of Willowbrook Road. The warehouse is owned by the Rockefeller Group and sits opposite the FedEx facility on Willowbrook.
Nine different departments responded to the fire, creating an unexpected challenge at the scene: social distancing. The recommended strategy to help avoid the spread of the coronoavirus was one more thing firefighters had to keep in mind while battling the windy rooftop blaze.
“Staging for a fire like that means you’re getting a lot of people together, and we also had to think about how to keep them apart,” Hassler said.
Hassler said the heating and AC unit that fell was being fed by a gas line that helped fuel the fire. Crews were called to the warehouse at 5:53 a.m. and escalated the response to three alarms to ensure there were enough engines and manpower to keep the blaze from spreading.
The sheer size of the warehouse and the fact that its still under construction worried Hassler, who knew that if crews didn’t knock it down fast, they would be playing catch up for hours.
“We really beefed it up right away because we didn’t want it to turn into something huge,” Hassler said. “We’ve seen what can happen when its gets out of control on the roof."
By 7:30 a.m., Hassler said the fire was completely under control, but not before burning a 30-by-50 foot section of the rubber roof. Firefighters from Northampton, East Allen, Catasauqua, North Catasauqua, both Lehigh and Northampton county Hanover Townships, Lehigh Township and Whitehall Station 39 responded to the scene.
No firefighters were injured at the scene, Hassler said.
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