Fire spread quickly in Pavilion building even as firefighters poured water on the flames

After nearly an hour on scene in Pavilion yesterday, I told a chief things seemed under control and I was heading back home to my yard work.

At that point, the two-story commercial and residential structure at the corner of Ellicott Street Road and West Park Street looked fine. There was a faint whiff of smoke in the air, but no smoke showing and certainly no visible fire.

"You might want to stick around," the chief said.

A firefighter told me a few minutes later as he laid out hose from a tanker truck, "this could get really interesting really fast."

Later the chief would tell me, "see, my worst fears came true."

The origin of the fire was in the crawl space of the attic. An area covered in hard wood, spray-in installation and only 18 inches of space in any direction.

First Assistant Chief Sean Vogt said his crew was poking through the ceiling, trying to find the right access point to the smoldering fire and Le Roy's crew had punched a ventilation hole in the roof, then the fire took on a life of its own.

"If we we could have gotten up there, gotten our hose lines up there, wetted it down, maybe we could have saved a little more of the building, but with it going through the roof, it just flashed over on us too fast," Vogt said. "It was just rough."

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Fire spread quickly in Pavilion building even as firefighters poured water on the flames