Great report about the fire!!! Younkers Fire: Six Firefighters in building as top floors collapse Update 3:20 p.m.: Travis Hurley was inside the former Younkers building when the fire on the top two stories caused part of the building to collapse. As one of the first firefighters at the scene, his job was to handle spot fires and send a stream of water up the elevator shaft to the upper-floor blaze, while his colleagues ascended the staircase. A total of six firefighters had only been inside the building for less than 10 minutes when the top floor collapsed, Hurley said. It sounded like a jet engine, said Hurley, 38, the president of the Des Moines firefighters union, IAFF Local 4. We didnt know to what level those folks had gotten to, he said. So while I was holding the steps, it was a matter of waiting to see if they came back down, or command calling for them on the radio to see if they would respond. In those moments, Hurley feared the worst. Anytime you have any sort of collapse, the thought is always there, he said. The firefighters immediately vacated the building. We didnt have time to mount any kind of attack, he said. The situation was definitely unsafe. Luckily, no one was injured. We were fortunate, Hurley said. Firefighters from suburban departments got the call to assist after 3 a.m. Clive sent one engine with a five-person crew, said assistant fire chief Dave Lyons. The firefighters sprayed water onto the Younkers building from other side of a collapsed skywalk section in the Greater Des Moines Partnership building. For some of the crew members, it was the third fire they had fought that day. But this one was unlike any that had come before. The overall scene was a much larger magnitude fire than myself or any of our crew had ever been exposed to, Lyons said. One engine company from Urbandale was assigned to spray the Younkers building from the top of a parking garage next door, on 7th and Locust Streets. At that point the fire had been darkened down pretty well, said Urbandale assistant fire chief Mike Cardwell. There were still pieces coming off the building, scaffolding coming down, but most of the collapses had already occurred. It was different from the suburban fires the team was used to, Cardwell said. In the suburbs you have large buildings with a lot of space around them, you can work back a ways, he said. Here, it was a lot of close quarters. The fact that nobody got hurt was an impressive feat. For more than four hours, Cardwell and three firefighters assisted on a blaze they wont soon forget. This will probably be one of the biggest fires theyve ever been to, he said. Update 12:30 p.m.: Ty Wistrand was walking home to Sherman Hill from a friends apartment in downtown Des Moines when he passed the Younkers building about an hour before the blaze. I walked right by the building, and it was just calm and quiet, said Wistrand, 27. Its kind of surreal looking back on it. Around 1:30 a.m., his friend downtown called him to tell him about the fire. Wistrand went to the lawn of the Hoyt Sherman Place and could see the flames eight-tenths of a mile away. He shot a video of the scene. I was just blown away, Wistrand said. It was crazy looking at how big it seemed from out there, and how well you could see it. It was just smoke billowing up from all over the place. It was a shocking moment. Des Moines Register
Posted on: Sun, 30 Mar 2014 13:14:23 +0000
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