Center Avenue fire results in emergency demolition Friday
The smell of smoke hung in the city air throughout Friday, Sept. 15, after a structure fire in a vacant building at the corner of South Cliff Street and Center Avenue.
The building at 119 Center Ave. — formerly Elliott Furniture Auction — sustained significant damage after two interior floors collapsed during the blaze. Later, it was subject to an emergency demolition.
Crews were called at 3:24 a.m. Friday and remained on the scene into the afternoon. They later returned briefly around 6:30 p.m. to check on a reported rekindle.
According to Christopher Switala, chief of Butler City Bureau of Fire, smoke was spotted coming from the boarded up windows of the building when they arrived in the early morning.
Crews did an initial interior search of the structure when they arrived. Once it was determined that no occupants were inside, Switala said they fought the blaze from the outside.
“The building is too dangerous to fight inside,” he said. “The color and density of the smoke is showing us where the fire is progressing more … there is a lot of smoke and not much fire that tells you it’s in the walls.”
Switala said the roof collapsed on the building, as well as the third and second floors inside.
The roof’s collapse allowed the fire to be fought easier, he said.
Ladder trucks from Chicora Volunteer Fire Department and Slippery Rock Volunteer Fire Company and Rescue Team parked on the viaduct, spraying water into the flames from above.
When fighting a fire of this size, Switala said the strategy was to continually hit the flames with thousands of gallons of water at a time. Between the ladder trucks and hydrant connections, Switala said the fire was doused with 4,000 to 5,000 gallons of water a minute.
“It’s just a matter of having enough fire trucks,” he said.
The building’s right side, which had faded lettering reading, “Elliott Furniture Auction,” started to bow early on in the blaze. That wall faces South Cliff Street, which was been designated a “collapse zone.” Fire personnel moved to the other side of the street for safety.
“Collapse is the main thing we’re worried about,” he said, Friday morning.
“This is an extended operation. We’ll probably be here the majority of the day chasing hot spots,” he added.
The cause of the fire was unknown Friday, but an investigation was underway.
“The building has been used for storage, there was at least one car in there,” he said. “But there have been no occupants in it for more than a year.”
The front end of a vintage Volkswagen Beetle rolled out of the building’s right side near South Cliff Street early on in the fire. Switala said he believes whatever was securing the car burned, causing it to roll.
Clair Boring, an owner of the building, said he purchased it in 2010 and used it as a warehouse for his painting business.
“It was just our storage, we had building material for the business,” he said.
In addition to the Volkswagen Beetle, Boring said two Nash Metropolitan automobiles were being stored in the structure.
“I wanted to save ‘em if I could,” he said.
Boring said he did have insurance, and was unsure the value of all that was destroyed in the fire.
“It is upsetting,” he said. “Sometimes you have no control.”
Another Center Avenue building owned by Boring burned in March 2017. Formerly Hutch’s Diner, the 339 Center Ave. building caught fire and displaced residents of eight apartments on the upper floors.
Around 9:30 a.m., Switala said a demolition company was called to assess the building and bring it down in an emergency demolition.
During the demolition, Switala said crews would spray debris as it is removed from the building.
“They’ll have to start knocking down walls because it’s not safe,” he said. “They’ll be digging it out with an excavator and we’ll spray it with water as it comes out.”
Slippery Rock Volunteer Fire Company and Rescue Team’s ladder truck moved to South Cliff Street from the viaduct to continue spraying the building from above, during the demolition.
Switala said part of the reason for the demolition was there were still hot spots on the first floor that firefighters could not access.
Demolition began just before 1 p.m. after Peoples Gas and West Penn Power disconnected gas and electric utilities from the building.
A.P. Wise Excavating knocked down the front of the building first; all the way to the first floor. Next, the crew began pushing the side walls toward the center of the structure, which was still smoking.
Butler Township Volunteer Fire District and Butler Bureau of Fire remained at the scene during the demolition. The township’s crew members remained on the viaduct with their ladder truck, periodically checking for hot spots and spraying water as needed.
There are two apartments in the building next door to 119 Center Ave., according to Switala. Those residents were displaced due to the smoke and water damage, but the fire did not extend to the building.
Robin Kuzma, a resident of the building next door, said she heard people outside her apartment around 3 a.m.
“About 10 minutes later, I heard ‘the cop knock,’” she said. “They said, ‘Everybody out, there’s a fire.’”
Kuzma and three other residents, a cat and two Guinea pigs made it out of the adjacent building safely. She said one of her cats was still unaccounted for.
“The basement bedroom’s flooded,” she said. “It’s all gone.”
The local chapter of the American Red Cross was on scene at 9 a.m., helping residents find housing.
City police blocked off Route 356 at Main Street. Railroad tracks running along South Cliff Street were also closed due to fire hoses being stretched across them.
And while schools in the Butler Area District were operating normally, some did not have outdoor activities due to the heavy smoke, according to superintendent Brian White.
Additional crews on scene at the fire were VA Butler Fire and Emergency Services; Chicora and East Butler volunteer fire departments; Saxonburg, Herman and Unionville volunteer fire companies; and Butler Ambulance Service.
