By Scott Perry
Herald & Review
DECATUR, Ill. — An alert passerby is credited with preventing a long night for Decatur firefighters.
“We knew this was a dangerous building and I thought this was going to be an all-nighter. So it turned out, in this case, that we got lucky,” Decatur Fire Chief Jeff Abbott said Sunday.
Abbott said a motorist noticed smoke coming from a vacant building at 300 E. Cerro Gordo St. and stopped at Station 1 a short distance away to report it.
A fire crew returning from an earlier call was near the building in question when the new call went out at 3:45 p.m. and was able to coordinate an immediate response.
Abbott said ladder trucks were staged on the nearby Franklin Street overpass and on Cerro Gordo Street and were used to get water into the upper two stories of the four-story structure and exposed active fire in the back and middle of the building.
Abbott said the fire was knocked down fairly quickly.
Once crews were able to enter the building, Abbott said their search turned up evidence of accelerants in several areas, suggesting arson as the fire’s cause. The Office of the State Fire Marshal has been called in to investigate.
Traffic along Eldorado Street was temporarily detoured during the response to allow for water hoses needed to feed the truck on the overpass.
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