Con­struc­tion acci­dent causes fire at War Memo­r­ial Stadium

[UPDATED 11÷23÷09 @ 11:48am] A fire broke out late Mon­day night inside War Memo­r­ial Sta­dium where the new “Wild­cat­ter” club seat­ing is under con­struc­tion.  The fire was caused by portable propane heaters inside the con­struc­tion site being placed too close to lum­ber mate­ri­als.  Quick action from the Laramie Fire Depart­ment pre­vented what could have been a much big­ger fire.

The Laramie Fire Depart­ment responded to a fire at War Memo­r­ial Sta­dium at 6:53pm on Mon­day night. Fire Depart­ment units arrived to find flames vis­i­ble from the east and west sides of the lux­ury seat addi­tion cur­rently under con­struc­tion.  Portable propane heaters had been used ear­lier by con­struc­tion crews work­ing at the site.  The heaters had been placed too close to a wood bar­rier shield­ing an open ele­va­tor shaft, this accord­ing to a press release from the Laramie Fire Dept.

“It was sim­ply a con­struc­tion site mis­take, there was no intent,” said Kyle Poli­dora, Laramie Fire Dept. shift commander.

The fire spread to three 100-pound propane tanks inside the con­struc­tion area. The reg­u­la­tors on the tanks were dam­aged due to the ini­tial fire and the gas con­tin­ued to feed the flames.  Fire crews uti­lized an aer­ial lad­der to apply fire streams from an exte­rior posi­tion to con­tain the fire while inte­rior crews made access and removed an addi­tional nine 100
pound propane tanks to pre­vent fur­ther fire hazards.

“It was a unique fire attack, in that we had an exter­nal stream on the fire to hold it while also hav­ing
inte­rior crews in to remove the fuel sources,” said Poli­dora.  “We nor­mally would not apply an exte­rior stream to an area where crews were inside.”

The fire was out at 7:52pm with no injuries reported.

“There was some fire dam­age to a 1 and 1/2 inch PVC pipe car­ry­ing gas into the build­ing, Poli­dora said.  “Pres­sure built, but the pipe did not breach; the fire could have been much worse.”

The extent of the dam­ages will be fur­ther assessed by the con­struc­tion company.

“There was dam­age to the con­crete, the con­struc­tion com­pany will need to have a struc­tural engi­neer look at con­crete to eval­u­ate integrity,” said Polidora.

Poli­dora expects con­struc­tion will con­tinue on sched­ule upon inspec­tion by an engineer.

The Fire Depart­ment arrived with two pumpers, a lad­der truck, an ambu­lance, an inci­dent com­man­der and the Fire Pre­ven­tion Chief. A total of 13 fire­fight­ers were on the scene. The Laramie Fire Dept. has fin­ished their inves­ti­ga­tion into the accident.

Green means more than money at First Inter­state Bank

The First Inter­state Bank is get­ting a face lift—an envi­ron­men­tally friendly one to boot. FIB has decided to remodel their build­ing in Laramie to reduce harm­ful effects on the envi­ron­ment, said Gary Negich, pres­i­dent of First Inter­state Bank Laramie market.

“We feel that it is time to become more envi­ron­men­tally con­scious and take advan­tage of some tech­nol­ogy that will reduce our elec­tric­ity and gas con­sump­tion,” Negich said. Some of the new fea­tures include sof­fit light­ing and new insu­la­tion around the build­ing and sec­ond floor windows.

The remodel will be con­structed by sev­eral Laramie businesses—including Arcon, Inc as the gen­eral con­trac­tor, Sum­mit Struc­tures, Inc and Fre­mont Elec­tric, said Tom Man­gan, vice pres­i­dent of FIB Laramie. The build­ing was orig­i­nally con­structed in 1964. “While the tech­nol­ogy was very good at the time, energy effi­ciency was not a key ele­ment in any con­struc­tion,” Negich said. … Con­tinue Reading