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YOUNGSTOWN FIRES
Photo
Youngstown firefighters spray water to control a blaze at an industrial building on the city’s lower North Side. The department was busy Monday with two simultaneous fires, this fire at 837 Madison Ave. and a smaller fire at a house at 23 Hilton Ave.
Staff report
YOUNGSTOWN
The fire chief said a large industrial fire that sent smoke billowing over the city’s North Side likely was caused by a spark from welding.
Fire crews were called to the building at 837 Madison Ave. at noon Monday.
The building had at one time been a dry-cleaning business but had been vacant for some time. It was currently being used to cut and store tires. There was a large amount of tires inside the building at the time of the fire.
Fire crews attacked the blaze from two directions with aerial trucks and a constant flow of water before a second call of a smaller residential fire on the South Side was received.
Fire Chief John J. O’Neill Jr. said at least half the Madison Avenue structure had been destroyed. Other parts on the south side of the building were untouched.
He said that fire took three hours to contain and in total, nine Youngstown units responded to the blaze.
O’Neill Jr. said an employee inside the building was welding metal when a spark hit a wooden plank in the building’s ceiling starting the fire.
“It just got a head of them,” O’Neill said. “We’re not sure if there was a delay in calling.”
Most of the roof collapsed while firefighters were battling the fire.
There were two men inside the building, but both managed to escape before firefighters arrived.
No one was injured in the fire.
O’Neill said it is hard to put a dollar amount on the total loss at the building without a complete inventory of what was inside, but he estimated the loss to be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
A South Side fire at 23 Hilton Ave., which started around the same time as the North Side blaze, began in the kitchen, fire officials said, but was easily controlled. No damage estimate was available, and there were no injuries.