(The following article by Rachel Kovac was posted on the Knoxville News Sentinel website on February 22.)
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — An early morning fire Wednesday in a vacant building near Church Street United Methodist Church forced Norfolk Southern to temporarily halt train traffic on a set of tracks.
The fire began around 2 a.m. at 836 West Hill Ave. When firefighters arrived they found the windows and doors boarded up, and they had to remove the plywood to fight the fire, according to Knoxville Fire Department spokesman Charlie Barker.
“The fire was quite extensive,” Barker said. “We had to fight it defensively because of two things: There was so much fire and not knowing what the structural status of the building was.”
About an hour into fighting the fire the backside of the building collapsed over a ridge and landed on the Norfolk Southern railroad tracks that lead across Fort Loudoun Lake.
Norfolk Southern canceled trains that run on those tracks for the day and cleared the track. By 2 p.m. Wednesday the track was clear. Norfolk Southern spokesman Robin Chapman said the trains will run today.
Firefighters left the scene around 6:30 a.m. but were called back when the fire sparked again a few hours later. Barker said it is not uncommon for a fire to rekindle in a building that has collapsed.
After the fire was put out the city of Knoxville service department arrived to demolish the building because it posed a safety hazard, Barker said.
KFD does not know what started the fire, nor do they know if anyone was in the building.
“We will probably never know what started the fire because of the condition of the building at the time of the fire,” Barker said.