By Nate Carlisle
The Salt Lake Tribune
Copyright 2007 The Salt Lake Tribune
All Rights Reserved
DRAPER, Utah — Investigators think a vehicle battery that was being charged caused Sunday’s blaze at a fire station in Draper.
Lori Dyer, resident agent in charge of the Salt Lake City office of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, cautioned the findings are preliminary but point to the charging battery.
“It’s possible there was some kind of problem there,” Dyer said, “but we don’t know what yet, and we may never know.”
The battery was inside the engine case of a four-wheel all-terrain vehicle, which was destroyed in the fire. Dyer said she didn’t know if the blaze originated at the battery, the connection of the charger and the battery or another related point.
About 5 a.m. Sunday, a vehicle bay at a Unified Fire Authority station at 14324 S. 550 East caught fire. By the time the fire was extinguished, it had rendered the bay unusable and destroyed the ATV and a truck used to fight brush fires. No one was injured.
There were five firefighters asleep in the station at the time of the fire. They learned of the blaze when two Draper police officers banged on the station and woke them.
UFA Chief Don Berry said Monday there were smoke detectors in the bay, but they did not work properly. On Wednesday, Berry said he had been misinformed — there were no detectors in the bay.
Berry said detectors were not installed because of concern engine exhaust would create false alarms. The bay was fitted with a manual alarm someone could pull in case of fire, he said.
The station’s living quarters and offices do have smoke detectors, Berry said, and UFA will examine whether smoke detectors can be installed in other vehicle bays.
“We’re going to take a look at that and see if there are some detectors we can install in our facilities that would do the job we need and not give a lot of false alarms,” Berry said.
Berry said the damage is estimated at $750,000 to $1.5 million.
The ATV belonged to the bomb squad, Berry said.