Fire burns Northway
By John Joyce
Published in News on November 4, 2015 1:46 PM
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News-Argus/MELISSA KEY
Members of the Goldsboro Fire Department work to extinguish a structure fire at Northway TV, part of a strip mall on North Berkeley Boulevard on Tuesday morning.
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News-Argus/MELISSA KEY
Members of the Goldsboro Fire Department respond quickly to a structure fire at Northway TV, part of a strip mall on North Berkeley Boulevard, on Tuesday morning.
The cause of a fire that threatened to destroy an entire block of stores at a strip mall off North Berkeley Boulevard Tuesday has been ruled undetermined.
The Goldsboro Fire Department said quick action by a neighboring businesses prevented the fire from being a lot worse.
All six city fire companies turned out Tuesday to a structure fire at Northway TV at 1073 N. Berkeley Blvd., a television repair shop anchored in the strip mall that sits below U.S. Highway 70 between the overpass and the intersection of Berkeley and Royal Avenue.
The call came in at 9:28 a.m. as a working structure fire.
"The business next door, En-tech, they were the ones that discovered the fire," Assistant Chief Eric Lancaster said.
En-tech employees heard some noises and saw smoke. They looked through the window and saw flames inside the TV repair shop and called 911, he said.
It was also the En-tech employees who had several people move their cars from in front of the business to allow access to the fire department, and who prevented some citizens with good intentions from turning the fire into a catastrophe.
"Some fellas had come up with fire extinguishers and were going to bust the windows out. And the people at En-tech stopped them, thankfully," Lancaster said.
The sudden rush of air from the shattering of the window would have meant an instant burst of fuel to the fire and the situation could have escalated, he said.
Goldsboro Engines 5 and 2 had the main attack on the fire and knocked it down within a few minutes of arriving on scene. The heavy smoke took much longer to dissipate and several neighboring businesses, including En-tech and another electronics store, had to be cleared until the smoke was cleared.
The fire department remained on scene until about noon, making sure there were not any lingering hot spots in the walls or ceilings threatening to rekindle the fire.
The $1 million complex suffered only minor damage, with the bulk of the losses relegated to contents within the Northway TV repair shop. An investigation determined the fire likely started from one of two power strips plugged into an electrical outlet the circuit breaker for which had been flipped.
"That is where the major concentration of fire was. There was heavy charring to floor around the power strip," Lancaster said.
He said the cause could not be definitively pinpointed, however, so to allow for room to go back and positively categorize the fire once more information is gathered, the official word is the cause has been listed as undetermined.
Goldsboro Fire Marshall John Morton said he has visited Northway several times over the past few years and written the business owner, David Williams, up for general infractions.
"He has been written up before for having general clean-up issues," Morton said.
He said he would try to work with Williams to get him back up to the fire code standards, but a few weeks would go by and the place would be a mess again.
Williams was never fined for an infraction, Morton said.
"We try to give people three strikes before we take that sort of action," he said.
The damage to the business was estimated at $70,000, according to Lancaster's fire report.
"We estimated $50,000 to the structure and another $20,000 for the contents," he said.
During the fire, firefighters had to pull the electrical meter to the store ensure power was fully cut so they could continue to fight the fire safely.
"He is going to be shut down for a while," Lancaster said. "But really it was the quick action on the part of En-tech that led to the fire not being as bad as it could have been," Lancaster said.