stormgod
02-02-2008, 11:54 AM
Thursday morning Feb 1, we lost a big peice of history here in Crawford County PA. The Conneaut Lake Park's Dreamland Ballroom burned, as did a large part of the amusement park midway. The 99 year old building featured a 20,000 sq foot maple dance floor that was the starting point for Perry Como, Doris Day and it featured all of the big name bands from the 40s. Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorcey and others. First floor contained the parks maint. shop, concessions, and a large storage area. Second floor was the dance hall. The building was built using an arch span roof, very dangerous for us firefighters, and was all wood that had been repainted many times with oil based paints through the years.
The white hats had pre-planned this fire for years and knew they had a very small opportunity to stage an interior fight in this building. No major injuries that Im aware of. On a sad note, this building was NOT insured and the fire will likely spell the end of the park. It was on hard times to begin with and this will likely give the developers the ammo needed to sell off the land and build condos.
Dispatch went straight to a second alarm on initial dispatch.
First arriving units had a small one room fire in the maint. shop. Within a minute or two, the fire raced into the roof area and took off in the 40 mph winds that accompanied the ice storm we were having. The rest is history. The fight raged for about 8 hours. Heres a link to a short video of the fire. Note the chlorine tank blowing up at the end of the video clip!
http://s103.photobucket.com/albums/m151/pafirepics/
The white hats had pre-planned this fire for years and knew they had a very small opportunity to stage an interior fight in this building. No major injuries that Im aware of. On a sad note, this building was NOT insured and the fire will likely spell the end of the park. It was on hard times to begin with and this will likely give the developers the ammo needed to sell off the land and build condos.
Dispatch went straight to a second alarm on initial dispatch.
First arriving units had a small one room fire in the maint. shop. Within a minute or two, the fire raced into the roof area and took off in the 40 mph winds that accompanied the ice storm we were having. The rest is history. The fight raged for about 8 hours. Heres a link to a short video of the fire. Note the chlorine tank blowing up at the end of the video clip!
http://s103.photobucket.com/albums/m151/pafirepics/