WARRENSBURG – The Warrensburg Fire Department responded to a report of a structure fire in the 100 block of West Pine Street on July 26.
Crews responded at 5:38 p.m. to the report of a small fire. The fire was extinguished quickly. There are no injuries reported.
“The fire occurred in a little storage addition on the back of the building,” WFD chief Ken Jennings said. “They had fire just in a little door frame and a little bit of the wall section of that add-on.”
The cause of the fire is still under investigation, however, it was most likely caused from a cigarette being improperly disposed of. “We do know that it was likely that some patrons had smoked on that back deck at some point during that day,” Jennings said. “That’s one thing that we haven’t been able to rule out right now. Just improperly disposed of smoking material. So just as a reminder on that, those that do smoke, just make sure that their butts and smoking material is completely extinguished or discarded in a safe manner.” Due to the fact that this fire was in the heart of downtown Warrensburg, the fire could have been a much more significant incident.
“If the early recognition wouldn’t have occurred it paints a completely different picture,” Jennings said. “All those buildings are joined down there, they’re very old buildings. The fire stoppage between buildings is not what it was when it was originally designed so it could be expected that there would be some pretty devastating fire loss there had it gone unnoticed for a longer period of time. It is a concern in that downtown area on, you know, preventing any fires from occurring because that loss can turn into something pretty big pretty quick.”
The fire was brought under control within minutes of WFD’s arrival. Thanks to their haste, no major damage was done to the structure.
