One firefighter received a minor injury this morning while working to extinguish a fire in an abandoned house in Jacksonville.
The Jacksonville Fire Department received a call of a possible house fire in the 700 block of North Main Street at approximately 7:00 am. Captain Mike Martin with the Jacksonville Fire Department said on scene that a portion of the house was fully involved when crews arrived.
“We were notified that there was a possible house fire or possible active fire on North Main. JPD arrived prior to us and they said there was a structure involved. When we arrived fire was blowing out of the back of the house. Somebody had made access to the house through one of the back door areas.
The house sustained major damage but the house had no value originally it was actually a liability. We were on scene quite a while because it had multiple attic areas the fire had gotten up into. I’d say within an hour we actually brought the active fire under control and moved to the overall stage.”
The house located at 749 North Main on the corner of Independence had been vacant and boarded up for an extended period of time. Martin says it was evident entry had been made in the rear of the boarded-up structure at some point prior to their arrival.
Martin says one firefighter sustained a minor injury during the incident, but overall it was a great team effort in extinguishing the blaze.
“We had just had shift exchange at seven o’clock. In fact, the crew that was coming off duty, they stayed around because they knew we were going to have a call in, so we had an awesome response to the call in. Plus South Jacksonville was here timely, they came and assisted us with fire personnel.
At this time I’ve got one fireman with a cut hand. It doesn’t look like he’s going to need any treatment. I haven’t looked at it yet but it was a minor, minor cut.”
The house along with an adjacent abandoned house were both scheduled to be demolished soon. The adjacent house was gutted by a fire back in May of this year. At the time of the fire, it had been deemed suspicious in nature as it was abandoned at the time as well.
Martin says the value of the structure that burned Saturday was minus 10,000 figured by the cost to tear it down. A suspected cause of the fire has yet to be determined as of press time.