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Fire on Warren Post Office roof doesn’t stop delivery of mail
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ON THE ROOF: Firefighters spent a couple of hours putting out a fire in the roof of the Warren post office on High Street Northeast that started at 3:20 p.m. Monday. Water used to put out the fire did some interior damage to the building. Workers using torches on the post office roof started the fire, the fire department said. The post office was closed Monday for Columbus Day.
Fire on Warren Post Office roof doesn’t stop delivery of mail
STAFF REPORT
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 Tuesday.
The Warren Fire Department, which responded 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 Tuesday 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.