Nick McWilliams reporting – A fire Friday afternoon caused extensive damage to an appliance shop on the northwest side of New Philadelphia.
Fire crews were toned out for a working structure fire at 2:24 p.m. at 510 Tuscarawas Avenue in the former Foutz and Son building, which is now a thrift shop.
New Phila Captain Robert Snyder says that multiple stations were toned out, including Dover, Uhrichsville, Bolivar, Sugarcreek, with multiple apartments located above the store.
“We had our first engine company, they went in through the rear of the building and started attacking the fire that way. We had the Dover units, they did a search of the second floor and made sure no one was trapped inside. We had another crew go up on the roof, cut a hole, break some windows, and they found some stubborn fire trapped in some walls.”
All building occupants were outside the structure when firefighters arrived, and both floors suffered fire, smoke, and water damage.
Snyder says that the process to knock the fire down was fairly quick, but due to the older style building, there was extra effort to locate any fire that might have been hiding in walls, an issue he says commonly happens with a structure of that age.
The investigation is underway for the origin of the blaze, and Snyder could only say that the fire started on the first floor within the business.
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