Chesterton
firefighters doused a blazing dumpster fire behind the new Dollar Tree on
Thursday.
Lt. Brandon Smith
told the Chesterton Tribune today that the fire presumably had been
burning for some time before it was discovered, at 7:50 p.m., because on the
CFD’s arrival it was fully involved. “It was cooking for a while,” he said.
The CFD used around
350 gallons of water and another couple of gallons of foam to extinguish the
fire, which burned hot enough, long enough, to leave the dumpster warped and
ruined, Smith said.
Had the Dollar Tree
been constructed of wood instead of masonry, Smith added, it might have gone
up too, as the dumpster was located no more than three feet away from the
building’s exterior rear wall. “The wall was warm to the touch,” he said.
The cause of the
fire was undetermined, and the dumpster had been loaded mostly with
cardboard.
The CFD cleared the
scene at 8:15 p.m.
For the record,
this dumpster fire was the second in less than two months in the Dollar
Tree/O’Reilly Auto Parts strip mall just west of the Gelsosomo’s on Indian
Boundary Road. On June 1 a fire began in a dumpster behind the second
building in the mall, currently unoccupied, just to the west of the Dollar
Tree. That dumpster had been loaded with odds and ends: yard waste, lumber,
a mattress, a TV. The cause of that fire also remained undetermined.