STATter 911

Close call: Click the image above to see isolated and slow motion version of firefighter getting hit by master stream during Sunday's fire

Photo above from Doug Walton, Laurel VFD. See more in this series of images at LaurelVFD.org.

Photos above from Beltsville VFD Chief Al Schwartz. Click here for more pictures from BeltsvilleVFD.com

Watch Tom Yeatman's raw video of Sunday's fire in Laurel, MD

See coverage of July 22, 2007 fire in the same building

All that was left standing was the stairwell. The rest of 14803 Bowie Road in Laurel, Maryland had collapsed into the basement. Prince George's County Fire/EMS Chief Spokesman Mark Brady said minutes before the catastrophic collapse firefighters were operating inside the building. They had been ordered out because it was unnoccupied and there was a heavy volume of fire. According to Brady, "Without a doubt there would have been probably fatal injuries if our personnel had been inside the structure".

14803 Bowie Road is in the middle of a trio of attached 3-story, garden-style apartment buildings. It was the building most heavily damaged during an intentionally set fire early in the morning of July 22, 2007. The structure had been rebuilt, and along with the two adjacent buildings, was being renovated to be used again as rental units in the Laurel Pines complex.

Sunday's fire broke out around 1:00 PM. While it is too early to say what caused the latest fire, Brady said work crews had been using portable, salamander type heaters for drywall installation. According to Brady, areas where drywall wasn't installed would allow faster fire spread to structural members and likely contributed to the sudden collapse.

While firefighters operating in and around the adjacent buildings were showered with some debris from the collapse, there were no injuries. Damage is estimated at 3 million dollars.

Investigators declared the July fire arson, but no one was ever charged. Brady and other sources confirm that there were two suspects in that case. One died of natural causes shortly after the fire. The second was murdered weeks later in nearby Montgomery County, MD.

Photo above from PGFD's Mark Brady

# posted by Dave Statter @ 10:30 PM