Thursday night
Published 12:00 am Thursday, March 4, 2010
Smoke boiled from a rear door in the Dollar General Building.
Fire fighters stayed inside the building filled with acrid, opaque smoke for five minute shifts before exiting for fresh air and water.
Batesville Fire Chief Tim Taylor (center) and Captain Banks Brasell (right) kept watch over crews entering and exiting the Dollar General rear door.
Batesville Fire Department Captain Bobby York is identifiable after having removed his headgear. York fought his first fire in the early 1950s on the Batesville Square.
A crew of fire fighters takes up the hose relay as they prepare to enter the rear door of the structure. The glow at the doorway is a light placed there by fire fighters. The blaze generating the smoke is deeper inside the building. Banks Brasell (right) has been fighting fires in Batesville almost as long as Bobby York.
Fire equipment and hoses stretch across the Dollar General parking lot as smoke flows through a rear doorway. An emergency light placed inside the door glows.
In they go, fire fighters made anonymous in heavy turnout gear enter as fire fighters just relieved rehydrate.
Two fire fighters stand by, holding a hose and waiting for two more to join them before entering the smoky doorway.
By John Howell
A stubborn, smoldering fire appeared to have gutted Batesville’s Dollar General Store Thursday night as fire fighters from several departments struggled through acrid smoke, attempting to extinguish its source.
“Right now, I’ve got more fire than I want,” Batesville Fire Chief Tim Taylor said about 7:50 p.m. as shifts of four fire fighters pulled two-and-one-half-inch hose lines through a rear door on the building’s west side. Taylor said that other firefighters bringing a hose through the front door were also attempting to get water to the fire source.
“I don’t know whether they’re some shelves that fell over or what,” Taylor said, describing obstacles inside the building that kept fire fighters from locating the source of the smoke.
Fire fighters wearing breathing apparatus and protective turnout gear managed to stay inside in the stifling smoke for about five minutes before exiting through the rear door to be replaced by another crew.
The fire appeared to be located near the rear of the building, and smoke poured from the back door and from the building’s mansard on the front.
Batesville Police Department Captain Jimmy McCloud said that the fire alarm reached the dispatcher at 7:03 p.m. The fire commander on the scene reported the fire out at 8:31, McCloud said.
Fire units and personnel from Pope, Courtland, Sardis and other county departments joined Batesville fire fighters in mutual assistance response.
