Some of the fire departments begin wrapping hoses and putting gear away as the downtown firefight wound down yesterday
By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter
TOLEDO – Members of eight fire departments battled the blaze yesterday morning that threatened an entire city block in downtown Toledo, and in the end two buildings were destroyed and a handful of adjacent businesses suffered light smoke damage.
The upper levels of the former Masonic building that holds Cowlitz River Antiques was gutted and the attic to the adjacent Used Book Store to the north was burned. The ground floor of both sustained water damage.
“Not good,” Toledo Mayor Jerry Pratt said yesterday as he watched firefighters winding down the operation. “That whole upstairs is full of Toledo history.”
The proprietors of the two businesses were instrumental in creating the Toledo Historical Society some six years ago and they keep its records, collections of photographs and artifacts inside.
Marie and Robert Oberg own the larger building and she had a logging museum fixed up upstairs, former city council member Steve McNew said as he and his wife spent part of their Christmas morning observing the aftermath.
Anita Emel who operates the bookstore surveyed the scene earlier in the day and then left, according to the mayor.
“I talked to Anita this morning, she’s pretty distraught,” Pratt said. “In fact I held her while she cried for a little while.”
Emel and Oberg helped found the society in the spring of 2004, in part because the area which saw one of the earliest white settlements in Lewis County had no museum.
While crews couldn’t fight the fire from inside because of the risk of the roofs collapsing, after it was under control firefighters made a quick trip inside the bookstore and retrieved some important papers and photos belonging to the historical society, according to Lewis County Fire District 2 Chief Grant Wiltbank.
“Anita stood at the window and said ‘we need those boxes right there’,” Wiltbank said. “It was just in and out.”
Wiltbank said the fire appears to have started on the second floor and spread to the attics of both buildings. The cause is under investigation.
The two storefronts along with Timberland Bank face Second Street – which was renamed Ramsey Street on that block a few years back – just off of the main route through town, Cowlitz Street which is state Route 505.
The bank was spared, but a row of businesses on Cowlitz Street sustained some smoke damage, according to the fire chief.
The backside of the two buildings – where the worst of the fire was – sits just across a narrow alley from Toledo Hardware.
“Our big concern was the fire jumping and taking out the hardware store and the pharmacy,” Wiltbank said.
The call came at 4:30 a.m. and drew what Wiltbank estimated was at least 30 firefighters.
Responders came from Toledo, Winlock, Vader, Napavine, Centralia, Castle Rock, Toutle and Kelso-Longview – the equivalent of a three-alarm fire, according to the chief.
Wiltbank, a volunteer chief was on his way home from his job at the fire department in Gig Harbor. Assistant Chief Mike Dorothy was the incident commander. Mayor Pratt said he arrived after getting a phone call at 5 a.m.
“When I came down the hill, the street was blocked and the flames were shooting close to 40 feet high,” Pratt said.
The fire hoses weren’t making a lot of headway until the ladder truck from Centralia’s Riverside Fire Authority joined them, according to Pratt.
“Thank God for the Centralia fire department, they probably saved the block,” he said. “When they opened up with that thing, it really knocked it down.”
Anita Emel's Used Book Store
Marie and Robert Oberg's Cowlitz River Antiques
•••
Read yesterday morning’s breaking news of the fire as it burned and see more photos here
Join us