By Liz Beavers
lbeavers@newstribune.info
managing editor
KEYSER — As the traditional Fourth of July fireworks began to light up the Keyser sky above Potomac State College, fireworks of a different nature lit up the other end of town as the Comcast building on North Main Street erupted into flames.
The blaze, which kept firefighters on the scene until the wee hours of the morning, resulted in an injury to one Keyser volunteer firefighter and the loss of cable and Internet services to Comcast customers all over the county.
“It started right around the time the fireworks started,” Keyser Fire Chief Mike Simpson told the News Tribune, noting that, although many of the city's firefighters were at the National Guard Armory assisting with the fireworks, a certain number are always kept on standby in case anything happens.
“There was no delay in getting here,” he said Sunday as he stood in back of the charred building, where the fire is believed to have started.
“It's definitely suspicious in nature. It started back here in this area,” he said, indicating what was once a small porch, and the back storage area of the building.
“When the firefighters got here, the whole back side was fully involved.”
As the firefighters arrived, so did the curious onlookers, and the Keyser Police Department and Mineral County Sheriff's Department were forced to shut down many of the streets in the downtown area and keep sending onlookers — many of them with cameras and video equipment — back behind the yellow caution tape.
Simpson said the one firefighter who was injured was treated for smoke inhalation and later released.
see FIRE page 7
According to the Mineral County Office of Emergency Management, the call came in at 9:29 p.m. as “smoke and fire in the alley behind Main Street.” Simpson said Keyser firefighter Marques Rice, who had been on his way to work, was the one who radioed the fire in to 911.
As firefighters had been fighting the blaze from the front and back of the building for about an hour, and it seemed to be calming down a bit, the blaze suddenly took on new life and broke through the roof of the building, beginning to lick out over the roof of the adjacent Reed's Drug Store.
On the other side, the heat of the flames broke out the outside pane of a two-pane window in the upstairs of the M&T Bank building, in the vicinity of Dan James' second floor law offices.
“If it would have broken all the way through that window, we could have lost that building too,” Simpson said.
He praised the firefighters who set up a “window curtain” by spraying down both neighboring buildings in an attempt to keep them safe.
“They may have some smoke or water damage, but it could have been a lot worse,” he said.
Simpson estimated the damages to the Comcast building between $400,000 and $500,000.
A representative from the West Virginia State Fire Marshal's Office is expected to be on the scene today.
Although Comcast closed its customer service office that had been located in the front of the building and moved a lot of its equipment out in March 2008, the equipment necessary for supplying cable and Internet service to their local customers remained in the back of the building.
As a result of damage done by the fire, those customers were without service late Saturday and on Sunday.
Jody Doherty, vice president for public relations for Comcast, expected that service to be resumed by late afternoon Sunday.
“Our folks responded very quickly; they're there now working to get it back,” she said when contacted by cell phone at approximately 1:30 p.m.
“I'm thinking it will be back in a couple more hours.”
Doherty said restoring service would not be an easy task, however.
“They have to totally rebuild our system,” she said. “They're bringing in equipment from all over.”
Firefighters from nine different area companies cut short their holiday Saturday to assist Keyser in fighting the blaze. They included: Fountain, New Creek, Burlington, McCoole, Tri-Towns of Piedmont, Potomac No. 2 of Westernport, and Bowling Green, who were all on the scene, and Bloomington and Elk Garden who were placed on standby.
Keyser EMS was on scene, as well.
Keyser remained on the scene until 1:06 a.m.
Keyser, W.Va. —
