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November 12, 2009

Fire marshal: Warehouse fire ‘suspicious’

By Nathan Straus

nstraus@jacksonvilleprogress.com



Smoke and flames still linger in Jacksonville the day after the Grimes Waterworks Inc.-owned building burned to the ground.

The massive structure caught fire Wednesday morning and took a full shift of Jacksonville Fire Department personnel to keep it under control. Crews from New Summerfield, North Cherokee, Bullard and Earles Chapel fire departments assisted on the call.

At the scene of the blaze Thursday, Jacksonville Fire Marshal Dennis Tate described the fire as suspicious.

“The people who own it, their insurance man is on the way from Kansas, and we’re going to take a look at it,” Tate said.

Tate said the old vacant building, nearly 100,000 square feet of metal and wood, was likely very flammable.

“We’re trying to figure that out,” he said of the cause of the fire. “If someone did something to it, if they left the smallest thing.”

According to the Cherokee County Appraisal District, the property was worth a little more than $133,000. Samuel Grimes, owner of Grimes Waterworks Inc., said he paid for the building on North Jackson Street at a bankruptcy auction, but would not say how much he paid for it.

“We bought it for a specific use that has changed,” Grimes said. “The building was an empty warehouse. It was not in use.”

Appraisal district records state ownership of the building, which used to be Trinity Church Furniture, changed hands to Grimes in January 2007.

Grimes said utilities to the building were off for quite some time and added he had no idea what could have caused the fire.

He also said the building was insured, but said he didn’t know for how much it was insured.

Jacksonville Fire Chief Paul White said the black smoke rising from the early portion of the fire was likely from paint cans, shingles or other hydrocarbons.

“It burned down faster than normal,” White said. “Particularly because of the air.”

White said air rushed into the building like a hurricane because of the need for oxygen to feed any fire. He also said firefighters, when attempting to save the metal building closest to North Jackson, encountered a funnel of air blowing through the opening in the building as it fed the flames.

An on-site witness Wednesday said he saw a black male with a pit bull running north on Bolton Street, away from the fire, shortly before 10 a.m. The witness asked to remain anonymous because he had not yet given a statement to police on scene.

Isaac Battle, the man’s neighbor, elaborated on the witness’s sighting.

“He saw a black guy come out of those woods (near North Bolton),” Battle said. “And he wasn’t moving slow when he came out of there. He had enough time to start a fire and get it to a blaze like that. It didn’t hesitate once it started.”

Battle said he has lived nearby on Bolton Street for 25-30 years.

Fire officials will continue investigating this fire through the coming days. More information will be available as it develops.

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