Two Greene County fire departments had to fight a fire in a crawl space of a home near Walkerville during overnight hours Sunday.
The White Hall Fire Department was paged out to a structure fire at a 11:22PM Sunday to a residence in the 500 block of Walkerville Road, approximately one mile south of the hamlet of Walkerville in rural Greene County.
White Hall Fire Chief Garry Sheppard says the fire was located and contained to a single room on the ground floor of the home: “It was a structure fire. What had happened was the homeowner had kind of a wood stove fireplace in their front room, and somehow that caught the floor on fire and then got underneath the house in the crawl space. It caught all of the floor joists on fire underneath the house. We had to basically cut out a large section of their floor and remove it so we could get to the fire to put it out. We checked with our infrared cameras and got the temperature down to about 75 degrees and felt safe then. We had to remove a large portion of their front room floor, but nobody got hurt. Basically, the house is still safe except for where he had to cut open the floor.”
Sheppard says when the initial emergency call was paged, the Carrollton Fire Department was dispatched for automatic mutual aid. Fire crews were able to leave the scene at 2:03AM Monday. Sheppard says one of his firemen remained on scene until 3:30AM to monitor for any possible rekindling. No damage amount to the home or contents was reported.