Press Release - Cherry Hill Firefighters Battle Winds & 2 Alarm Fire

To view the Local FOX News affiliate story, click here.

To read the News article in South Jersey's Courier Post, click here.

To view raw video from this fire, click on this YouTube video.

Photo by Curt Hudson. Just after 6:00 AM Sunday morning, March 4, 2007, Cherry Hill Firefighters responded to a reported building fire at the Chile’s Restaurant, located at 1906 Route 70 West, at the corner of Haddonfield Road. The fire was reported simultaneously by the building’s alarm system and by a security guard on duty across the street at the Wegmans Food Market, who saw smoke from the building.

When firefighters arrived, heavy fire and smoke were visible from the Haddonfield Road side of the building, which houses two restaurants, and firefighters could see fire deep within the Chiles restaurant seating area. Firefighters simultaneously deployed several hose lines to control this fast moving fire. An initial team began to attack the fire inside the restaurant, while other firefighters established a water supply and began to open the building at various access points. Also, a hose line was deployed to protect the Yale School, Yamaha Piano, and Cherry Hill Photo, located directly behind the fire building, and stop the fire from reaching three more important businesses. Because of the reports of heavy fire, a second alarm was ordered bringing additional crews to the scene.

Unknown to the interior crews, the fire had a prolonged time to develop as it had extended inside the walls and up into the attic area. Once the overhead ceiling began to come down on them, firefighters were forced to retreat and begin an exterior attack.

Within minutes of firefighters evacuating the building, the weight of the heavy air conditioning units on the fire damaged roof caused most of the ceiling and roof to collapse on the Chile’s portion of this two restaurant building. At one point, the fire rapidly vented out the side windows of the building, affecting a fire truck and crew that had set up in that area, causing them to relocate.

Crews had already begun setting up for an exterior attack. As the second alarm trucks were arriving, two ladder trucks and a third elevated master stream device called a Squrt, were supplied with water and began to fight the fire. Other master streams, called ground monitors, were set up and began to flow water into various window and door openings.

The high winds out of the west, estimated to be 15 to 20 mph, and gusting higher, fanned this fire throughout the Chile’s portion of the restaurant and into the Porterhouse Steak Restaurant, through the overhead construction. As firefighter’s exterior attack began to take hold, an emergency construction crew with heavy equipment was called in to help open up portions of the exterior walls to allow the master streams to penetrate more effectively. The fire was placed under control at 10:15 am.

The Cherry Hill Fire Marshal’s Office has initially ruled that this fire was most likely caused by a carelessly discarded cigarette on the exterior of the building. This caused a fire to occur in the base of a window sill, extend into the building, up the inside wall and took hold in the attic area. These circumstances also likely led to the fire going undiscovered by the building’s alarm system until conditions became much worse.