Car fire in repair shop garage contained
<p>Superior Volunteer Firefighters Robert Ireland and Donald Mellen work to halt a fire in the engine compartment of a car Saturday.</p>
The Superior Volunteer Fire Department received a call for a car on fire in the garage of the repair shop on River St. Saturday.
Upon arrival at the scene however, it was reported to SVFD Fire Chief John Woodland that the owner of the shop had put out the fire with an extinguisher he had on hand.
When Chief Woodland arrived back at the garage, the car was in front and the owner of the business and another individual were trying to pull the dashboard from it.
“Apparently what it did was it got the firewall so hot that apparently the insulation on the other side of the firewall started to smolder behind the dash,” Chief Woodland said. “I got here to do my report and said ‘well wait a minute’ and I paged back out.”
Two fire trucks quickly arrived on scene and a group of volunteers descended on the vehicle.
“We tried to get enough access in behind the dash so we could get enough water in there and get it knocked down,” Chief Woodland said. “We tried to use as little as we could but it probably did some damage – there really isn’t any way around that.”
A volunteer used the fire trucks hose to douse the engine compartment with water while other volunteers worked in the vehicle to remove the dashboard.
In a matter of minutes, the SVFD had the situation under control and any threat of a serious fire put aside.
“The initial call came in with a vehicle on fire in the garage and I had visions of this being a much more serious call,” Chief Woodland said. “(I am) very happy to see that it was pretty well knocked down before we got here because fire inside a commercial shop like this can get real big real fast."