Crowd control
Yarmouth firefighters battle more than blaze
With less than two feet separating an inferno from an adjacent home, Yarmouth’s fire chief said some “amazing” firefighting helped to protect that house, and other nearby structures, at the scene of a major blaze in Yarmouth Thursday evening.
But Yarmouth Fire Department Chief John Verrall also said everything didn’t completely go their way at the fire scene at the intersection of Argyle/William/ Forbes streets where an unoccupied home was destroyed.
The spectacular fire drew a huge crowd, Verrall said, and this hampered and threatened firefighting efforts early on.
“Things could have gone better,” he said at the scene. “When we arrived on the scene we couldn’t get to a lot of the hydrants because of all the cars and the people watching. One guy hooked one of our main water supply lines with his car and took it away, we had to replace that.”
All of this, Chief Verrall said, cost firefighters time in trying to get at the fire, given the amount of parked vehicles and others driving to the scene.
“It was so bad we couldn’t get at hydrants. We had to send trucks all around the town to get around all of the cars,” he said.
He said some people even drove their vehicles right up to the burning house as firefighters were still getting situated with equipment and manpower and hooking up to hydrants.
As the fire continued, so did the crowds, although later on not everyone was in the way. People, on foot, stood in a field, on lawns or in front of the church across the street from the fire. Many photos and video were being posted to social media.
In addition to the Yarmouth department, numerous county volunteer fire departments responded to the scene with equipment and manpower. Verrall said there was nothing that could be done to save the burning property, which was fully engulfed with flames shooting through the roof when firefighters arrived.
Hours later, however, he was in still in awe at how firefighters were able to protect the house immediately south of the burning structure.
“I used the word amazing because the first arriving unit arrived with two people, there were only two people on shift, and they stopped the fire from hitting that house. You saw, it was only over a foot away, that’s amazing,” he said.
“They did such a good job there. If it wasn’t for them stopping that so fast I don’t know what would have happened, especially with people hindering our water supply.”
Fortunately firefighters were also aided by a lack of wind as they battled the blaze.