Digital Analogue: Comment on Galesburg's burning

Digital Analogue

Comments: Galesburg's burning

Wow. I am hoping to visit the Burg sometime next month--I guess downtown will look rather different. Was everyone ok, at least? (You mentioned a couple of apartments.)

Posted by Chris T. at 10:57am on 23 Jan 2006

This is not the first fire in that building in the last week (at least it sounds like the same building). Last Saturday morning 3 kids under 14 set an accidental fire that spread throughout the first floor, and the smoke was so bad that they had to smash the windows to ventilate up to the third floor. It was an antiques warehouse, I hope after the first fire they got all of their inventory out.

Posted by Heather at 11:33am on 23 Jan 2006

The two buildings that burnt down this morning were connected, and the rear one is the one where the fire was last week. Today's started in the front one, though, and spread to the back one. I'm sure they'll investigate carefully on the cause of the fire...

No casualties, at least. And it appears that aside from the two destroyed buildings, fire damage was limited, although a collapsing wall took out the back end of the building with the frame store and the scrapbooking store. Dunno how much damage there was there, but a woman I talked to this morning who was the neighbour of the frame store owner said that they'd been able to get a lot of inventory out in the early stages of the fire before they had to evac the building entirely.

Posted by blahedo at 5:50pm on 23 Jan 2006

This reminds me of a fire that happened when I was a freshman in high school. A hardware store that was two blocks from my high school burned to the ground - granted, the high school was separated from downtown by the Fox River. The entire building collapsed, and the buildings on the rest of the block were a total loss because of the smoke and water damage. The city's now trying to build a civic center/hotel/underground parking garage on the site. That's terrible for the Burg - they don't need any more trouble.

Posted by Megan at 1:12pm on 24 Jan 2006

Wow...thanks for the pictures Don, I'd been trying to picture the area all day, and although sad, these give me a much better picture of what all happened. Way to be a citizen journalist.

Posted by Dan M. at 11:12pm on 24 Jan 2006

Wow! The quality of the pictures really speaks as to how bad the fire actually was. Shawn and I were in Galesburg and saw the aftermath. I really hope you guys get downtown up and about soon!

Posted by Elvin at 5:45pm on 27 Jan 2006