5 Alarm Fire

**seoulstice** · August 14th, 2008, 12:51 AM

I live in Conshohocken, about 12 city blocks from the fire's center on the same side of the river and luckily I got home at 4:00 before the fire started. I was watching TV and my roommate came home and said "Did you see the fire?". Here I had been ignoring all the sirens and thought maybe there was some sort of accident on a nearby road...I stepped out my front door and looked east and there was a huge column of smoke. You couldn't really see the blaze because it was obstructed by buildings and while I was curious I didn't want to walk down there and cause the professionals on the job any more headaches with having to corral people who came to watch. I watched it on the news and it was pretty crazy...Conshohocken has been growing at a tremendous rate and the fire centered on some new construction upscale apartments/condos that are right by the river...apparently there weren't a lot of fire hydrants in that area yet so they had to pump water from the river....they even ran a huge water hose through my street effectively blocking off traffic. Thank god I was already home and didn't have to deal with any of the traffic, my roommates almost couldn't get to our house and had to reverse onto some one way streets to get to our block. Really sucks for those people who lost their possessions, I couldn't imagine what they are going through...I have renter's insurance but I can't imagine trying to piece my life together even though I would get money for everything I lost. I really hope those people had insurance. Something like 200 people lost their homes.

**Asterix909** · August 14th, 2008, 11:42 AM

Originally Posted by seoulstice

You couldn't really see the blaze because it was obstructed by buildings and while I was curious I didn't want to walk down there and cause the professionals on the job any more headaches with having to corral people who came to watch.

well it is good to hear there are still considerate people out there. +1

**Dredly** · August 14th, 2008, 04:23 PM

Holy crap.... thats a LOT of devastation... hope they had renters insurance or else all those people are completely SOL and won't see a dime for all their lost items.

Not entirely sure how this managed to get all 5 buildings? Don't they have sprinkler systems in place to prevent fires?

**marinakorp** · August 15th, 2008, 10:17 AM

Originally Posted by zr700

Thats what I was thinking, They found out that their 51 mil project is worth 25 mil and they owe 100 mil on it.

Brian O'neil (developer) can write a personal check for that ammount... and it won't bounce.

**marinakorp** · August 15th, 2008, 10:21 AM

Originally Posted by Dredly

Don't they have sprinkler systems in place to prevent fires?

When a fire gets going... the sprinkler system won't put it out... may suppress it a bit to get people out.

we had a fire in our Old City Apartments last year or so (Old City burning was a headline) and we had sprinklers of course... all within spec, etc.

Took out a few apartments ... all because some hippie chick was burning aroma therapy candles in the day time... and fell asleep. Took out 11 or so apartments out of commission for over a year.

Not everyone has renters insurance... but they should.