Major Fire In Garden City

Chris S. Coray, Reporter

Rich Civic Times

Photo by Bobbie Coray

GARDEN CITY, Utah.  May 6, 2015. At 6:28 a.m., Bill and Barbara England called 911 to report smoke coming out of a large building just off of Kimball Lane in Garden City.  The building is owned by Brian Burr and had previously been used to manufacture exceptional wood and furniture items.  It was a very large structure, with a racquetball court on one end and a very large wood shop.  Recently it had been undergoing extensive remodeling to become a 20 bedroom, 20 bath, short term rental facility.  It was scheduled to open in about a month.

The Garden City Fire Department responded very quickly, bringing all of its available equipment and more than 20 firefighters.  The fire, however, had likely been burning inside for several hours and due to smoke and ongoing damage precluded fighting it except from outside the building.  At one point the flames were at least 40 feet high.

Photo by Laura Stocking Cluff

  

At the request of Chief Mike Wahlberg, additional fire suppression support vehicles and personnel came from Laketown, Randolph, Woodruff, and two units from Cache Valley, with a large ladder truck coming from North Logan and a main engine from Smithfield.  All totaled, more than 40 firefighters were engaged but in the end were able to only prevent the spread to other structures.  The building itself is a total loss with value likely exceeding $1 million.  Complete extinction of all burning material, including small residual hotspots, required almost 24 hours.  At the time of this writing the precise cause is still unknown.

Firefighters worked for nearly 8 hours until the blaze was contained and then monitored the site all night long.

Photo by Randi Hirschi
 

In the midst of such a sad event there were a few positive events.  First, the cooperation and assistance rendered by external fire departments demonstrates the good that can come from cooperative public safety effort, and second, when the large ladder track arrived from North Logan there was so much equipment that Garden City could not provide enough water to operate all the pumps on the various engines.  At the request of Riley Argyle, the Bear Lake Water Company opened

Photo by Bobbie Coray



 

the pipe system and valve completed two years ago to allow water to flow from Sweetwater to the city in just this kind of emergency.  This secondary source of water allowed all equipment to be adequately served and more than 150,000 gallons eventually came from the Sweetwater area.  This emergency provision worked exactly as designed.


Photo by Bobbie  Coray