Warren mail still delivered despite fire

WARREN — A Monday afternoon fire in the roof of the post office on High Street challenged its employees to live up to the famous motto about “neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night” preventing them from carrying out their responsibilities to deliver the mail.

But Warren Postmaster Thomas Kerns said in this case, neither fire in the roof, nor water falling from fire hoses into one of the main mail sorting areas of the building, nor water making it all the way down to the basement, stopped his office from doing its work on Tuesday.

The Warren Fire Department, which responded at about 3:20 p.m. to a fire started by workers replacing the building’s roof, covered the exposed mail with tarps, and the sorting cases were moved Monday afternoon to other areas of the back room, Kerns said.

No mail was destroyed, and all routes were delivered today on time, Kerns said.

In a worst-case scenario, the mail sorting could have been done at the Warren annex building on Niles Road, Kern noted.

A private fire and water restoration company came to the building and worked late into the evening to remove water and provide temporary protection for the roof, Kern said.

Three-fourths of the building has its power back on, and the boiler system in the basement appears to be undamaged, he said.