NORRISTOWN — Flames engulfed the Fire Chief’s Memorial Bandshell early Wednesday morning as firefighters worked to extinguish a fire that raged in Norristown’s Elmwood Park.
This particular fire call was personal to firefighters dispatched to control the blaze that began around 1:40 a.m. at the monument erected to honor first responders and leaders.
“I’m disappointed, angry, but we’re going to recover from this. We’re going to rebuild. We’re going to make it better for the community than what it was,” Norristown Fire Chief Tom O’Donnell told The Times Herald.
Norristown firefighters had been at the park late Tuesday night responding to a trash can fire around 11:45 p.m. After extinguishing that, O’Donnell said firefighters returned just a couple hours later to respond to a two-alarm structure fire in the park, O’Donnell said.
“We believe the fire started in and around a set of portable bathrooms that were behind the bandshell, but too close to the building,” O’Donnell said. “Once those bathrooms were lit on fire, the fire then extended from the outside of the structure up into the roof system, and burnt the roof off the building, and significantly damaged the building. We’re concerned about the structure’s stability right now.”
It took around 1.5 hours to get the fire under control, according to O’Donnell, and no injuries were reported. Additional fire and emergency medical services responders came from Bridgeport, as well as East Norriton, Lower Providence, Plymouth, and West Norriton townships.
Suspicious cause
O’Donnell said that a joint team of the Pennsylvania State Police, Norristown Fire Marshal and municipal police and fire agencies are investigating the matter. While the circumstances were unclear, O’Donnell said “we believe that [both fires] are possibly connected.”
He categorized the early morning incident as “suspicious in nature.”
“Fires in trash cans, fires in bathrooms don’t just spontaneously happen,” O’Donnell said. “Somehow there’s human hands involved, and that’s what we’ll be working with our fires in law enforcement to make sure [if] we can identify a suspect, that they’ll be held accountable, and brought to justice.”
Important monument
This was a difficult call for O’Donnell, he said, as he emphasized the monument’s importance to area residents and visitors alike.
“It’s a sad morning for the Norristown Fire Department as our cherished Fire Chief’s Memorial was destroyed by a two-alarm fire,” the Norristown Fire Department said in a Facebook post.
The monument was initially constructed in 1936, according to documents from the Montgomery County Planning Commission. While the original structure “fell into disrepair in the 1970s,” borough officials decided to revitalize the space in 1987. The renovation later merited a prize from the Montgomery County Planning Commission’s Land Development Award Competition in 1991.
“It’s near and dear to the fire department. It’s named after fire chiefs who’ve served the community since its inception. So it’s a monument that stood to represent the community and it was a focus point and a center point for a lot of things that happened in the community,” noting uses spanning the gamut from summer camps to recreational events.
“It’s sad that it resulted in what turned out to be a tragedy,” O’Donnell said. “It’s a historic building that means so much to so many other people in the community and outside the fire department. We’re going to rebuild.”
Source: Berkshire mont
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