The Free Press, Mankato, MN

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  • Matt Johnston

    Smoldering

July 3, 2008

Warehouse fire battled all day

Green Isle storage building smoldering Thursday

Tim Krohn

GREEN ISLE — Firefighters on Thursday afternoon were using heavy equipment to pull apart remnants of a large warehouse in Green Isle to get at smoldering fires.

Firefighters from several communities had fought a blaze that started about 10 a.m. Wednesday in the Shamrock Storage building, which took up two city blocks. By Wednesday night most of the other departments were able to leave and the Green Isle department kept working on a less-intense fire.

“They were there all night. Today the smoke is down a lot. It was very bad (Wednesday),” said City Clerk Paula Geisler. “I’m still seeing water trucks from other towns coming in today. It says a lot about small towns. A lot of people came to help.”

The fire was believed to have started from warehouse workers who were cutting metal with a torch.

Geisler said walls and ceiling pieces that fell in on the fire created small and smoldering fires all around the warehouse that firefighters were trying to get at Thursday.

The warehouse is owned by Steve Cummings, who is not a local resident, Geisler said. The building was built in the 1950s and was a farm equipment manufacturing plant called Farm Hand. Cummings purchased it a few years ago.

He stored a wide variety of things for businesses, including computer equipment, office furniture, DVDs, even sandbags.

It has been erroneously reported that semis were stored in the warehouse. Geisler said there were often semi trailers backed up to the warehouse but none were stored inside it.

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