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Ontonagon Fire Update |
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| The State Fire Marshal, Jeff Hubbard,
from Marquette was at the fire scene
Sunday, but the rubble was too hot for him
to do an investigation, He returned to the
fire scene on Tuesday to sift through the
rubble. He stated that cause the fire will
be classified as have started from
"undetermined causes" There was no evidence
that the blaze had started intentionally.
According to Hubbard the fire started at 518
River Street, (Vukalich/Olson's/ Persha's
Lost Bowl) |
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above - Fire Marshall Jeff Hubbard in an
interview with IronwoodInfo reporters
points out the origin of the fire at 518
River Street |
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The remains of of the six
buildings destroyed by fire on River
Street - Those buildings gutted by the
fire were: the former Pat Tucker Law Office
(originally the Paul Dolan Residence), The
former Olson's Restaurant (Persha's Lost
Bowl), the former MSU Extension Office
location, Rudy Saari's Sporting Goods (more
recently the home of the " Lake Superior
Voice", Northwoods Video, (former Scott
Barber Shop), Connie's Place and Bottomline
Bookeeping. |
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| Ontonagon County Telephone Co. workers
on duty Labor Day 9/1/08. Also at the scene
were Semco and Uppco workers mitigating and
fixing the outages caused by the downtown
fire. |
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| photo above - across River Street
a building receives heat damage. The
building, North Woods Insurance building
is owned by Denise Pestka. |
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|
Connie Shamion looking
over the remains of Connie's Place |
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| Owners and friends of Bottomline
Bookkeeping checking what is worth saving
from what is left of the basement of their
business building. Below - file photo of
Bottomline Bookeeping appearing in the April
15th edition of IronwoodInfo. |
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| photo above - Camp 1, located across the
street from the fire, received heavy water
and smoke damage when embers driven by the
strong winds jumped the street onto the
buildings rooftop. This building may become
the seventh casualty of the Labor Day Blaze.
Photo below - fireman on the roof of Camp 1
building, the quick response may be the
reason the building survives. |
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above - fireman on the Camp
1 Building when embers aided by strong winds
jumped from the west side of River Street to
the Camp 1 building located on the east side
of River Street. |
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| photo above the fireman set up a wall of
water attempting to stop the advance of the
spreading blaze. The wall of water was made
possible when Heavy Equipment from Pestka
Construction was brought in to help battle
the fire. Operated by Pat Pestka, the
equipment moved in and virtually tore down
two burning buildings clearing the way for
the firefighters.
Thanks to their fast response
and training, Stubb's Bar, Heggs
Plumbery, and the Rogers Insurance
Building at 544 River were spared from the
conflagration. |
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| Historical Notes |
| Just five days prior to this fire marked
the 112th anniversary of the fire that
destroyed Ontonagon on August 25, 1896. The
buildings destroyed Sunday morning were the
first to be built following the 1896 fire. |
| Thanks to Bruce Johanson for the
historical information contained with our
reports! |
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| Above - thankfully, services of the EMT
were kept to minimum. Several cases of smoke
inhalation and one 3rd degree burn to a
Fireman's hand were reported. |
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| The Sheriff's Deputies provided security
during the fire and for the two days
following the fire. |
| In addition to the early responders
volunteers from the Wakefield, Ironwood Township and Hurley VFD stood watch over the
fire later on Sunday, allowing earlier
firefighters to get much needed rest.
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| IronwoodInfo thanks all the responders,
Firefighters, EMT, Sheriff's Deputies
and Pat Peska for a job well done.
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| Congratulations to Linda Graham (IronwoodInfo)
first reporter/photographer on the scene.
IronwoodInfo had the first story with photos
on the Web even before our friends in
Ironwood woke up for breakfast. |
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Click for
More Coverage |
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Click To View Video of The fire
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