Firefighters tackle coal bin blaze

During last week's town council meeting, Public Works Director Scott Green informed the council that a fire occurred in the early morning of Saturday, November 9 at the Moorcroft Town Center.

According to Green, "The previous morning, the auger for boiler 2 broke."

This auger moves coal from the storage bin to the boiler. After the fire, the auger was repaired and is currently up and running.

In a later interview, Green stated that they are in the process of moving the affected coal to the auger.

"In a situation like that we have to get through all that coal to get to where [the affected coal] is located," he said.

The goal is to get the coal out of the storage bin and extinguish the active embers. This storage bin, according to Green, "Was holding 27 tons of coal at the time of the fire."

Due to the fire in the coal storage bin and the boiler room there are some charred beams that might need to be replaced.

Green stated, "The structure appears fairly decent, there doesn't seem to be any buckling of supports."

This fire was spotted by a concerned citizen, who called it in. This drew concerns from Councilman Dale Peterson, who asked, "Do we have a fire alarm system in there?"

Green replied, "Not that I'm aware of."

Councilman Austin Smith noted that the structure is encased in cement, but stated, "that it needs some TLC".

Green said that the entire situation was unfortunate but, "we learned from it and are moving forward".