By Tim Sturrock
The Macon Telegraph
Copyright 2007 The Macon Telegraph
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News
MACON, Ga. — A fire in a Macon dentist’s office basement led to the evacuation of several downtown buildings Monday. Firefighters fought the blaze for several hours.
The fire traveled through an intricate maze of ducts and conduits in the two-story office of Dr. Clyde Marlow, and firefighters took hours blocking it and putting it out, District Fire Chief Joe Pinkney said. Firefighters had to take breaks as they worked in the summer heat, Pinkney said.
“This proves that it doesn’t need to be a 15 story building to really lay you down,” he said.
Fire officials were called at 1:37 p.m. to the First Street building and managed to put out the main portion of the fire in about five minutes, he said. The fire began in the basement, which was full of explosive material including gas cans, paper files, oxygen tanks, nitrous oxide tanks and helium tanks.
Pinkney said the roof was a type that could collapse easily if heated by fire and then cooled off with water, endangering the firefighters.
The fire led to the evacuation of the Children’s Health Center at The Medical Center of Central Georgia and 30 patients, four nurses and several doctors had to move out temporarily.
“We’re having to do some sidewalk medicine,” said Memory Garcia, director of the Children’s Health Center.
She said most of the exams were continued in the human resources building of the Medical Center next door, though some continued in the shade outside.
She said the evacuation was very orderly, and that the fire wasn’t anything more than an inconvenience.
Barbara Hill, a bookkeeper at Marlow’s office, said employees saw smoke coming out of an ice machine and a sterilizer. When they looked at a staircase, they saw smoke coming from the basement.
“We just told everybody to get out in a hurry,” she said “I really wasn’t that scared.”