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Photo by Dustin Wenzel
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A devastating blaze ripped through the American Legion Hall, which has stood at the South Huron Street location since 1895 when the main building was built as a private residence.
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A swiftly moving fire that destroyed the American Legion Hall, 115 S. Huron St., on Sunday night was still smoldering in the early hours Tuesday and Ypsilanti firefighters returned to the scene at 4 a.m. to put out a rekindled blaze in the northeast corner of what remained of the structure.
According to Ypsilanti Fire Captain Michelle Stanbury, the building was 45 to 50 percent engaged when the firefighters arrived at 11:41 p.m., two minutes after the call came into the station.
"As we came down Woodward, we could see the south side of the building and realized how much of a hold it had," Stanbury said. She immediately put in a call to Ypsilanti Township for their extension truck, which was located at the Textile Road station.
Within minutes, she also called the Ann Arbor department to request their tower truck, which came from the Huron Parkway at Platt station. Stanbury said although the official reciprocal agreement is not yet in place, Ann Arbor was quick to answer the call, arriving before the Ypsilanti Twp. truck.
Stanbury also sent out a full callback, meaning off-duty firefighters responded from their homes. Fire Chief Jon Ichesco said Ann Arbor sent 12 firefighters and Ypsilanti Twp. sent eight to assist the 12 Ypsilanti firefighters on the scene.
Stanbury said Ypsilanti police officers were on the scene when the firefighters arrived and had located and cleared the nearest hydrants. The officers reported their assessment of the situation, as well as blocked off S. Huron Street and helped haul hoses in a cooperative effort to get the fire under control.
Stanbury said the one-story bar/kitchen area at the rear of the building and the two-story middle of the building was in flames, which had broken through the roof in the back section. Smoke was pouring from under the eaves of the three-story front of the building.
Firefighters made a cursory search of the front part of the building to make sure no one was inside, but could not go into the other sections because of the intensity of the fire.
Even with the extension trucks from Ypsilanti city and township, along with the tower truck from Ann Arbor, the fire continued to rage.
"Conditions were not as bad as they could have been," Stanbury said, "because the wind was less than it had been earlier in the day, but the cold hampered efforts, certainly."
Temperatures hovered around and slightly below zero, according to the National Weather Service, with wind chills of between 15 and 25 degrees below zero during the hours the firefighters struggled to control the blaze.
At the nearby Gilbert Residence nursing home, smoke infiltrated the windows and doors. Employees moved 41 residents to community rooms away from the fire, taking mattresses from beds to lay on the floors. Employees and neighbors, who showed up to volunteer, plugged window and doorway cracks with wet towels.
At one point, firefighters watered the side and roof of the residence closest to the neighboring fire as a preventative measure.
The firefighters left the scene shortly after 8 a.m. Monday. By that time, the back and middle sections of the building had collapsed into the basement. Although the outside walls of the middle section still stand, within lie only heaps of scorched beams, timbers and debris.
Crews from the Ypsilanti Department of Public Works then moved in to salt and scrape the several inches of ice from the roadway. The street could not be reopened until late Monday morning.
Ichesco said his unofficial estimate of the loss stood at between $725,000 and $750,000 on the structure, which he said was a "total loss" in his estimation.
Shortly after the fire crews returned to the station, they were called back to the scene when a gas line was found to be feeding more flames. According to Ichesco, the gas meter had been in the basement of the structure, so DTE Energy was forced to dig up the line and cap it to turn off the gas. Due to the cold, the cutter refused to start and firefighters had to aid in getting it going.
Firefighters were called back a third time on Monday afternoon, when smoldering debris reignited. At that time, Fire Capt. Dan Cain had his crew retrieve some of the artifacts and documents that had been stored at the hall.
"We're trying to salvage as much as possible," Cain said. "This is a bitter pill, especially after the previous loses of the roller rink and the Yankee Air Force Museum. We've lost a lot of history here."
On this third call, the firefighters laid down a chemical foam they hoped would smother not only the immediate flare-up, but anything smoldering underneath. Cain said the crew had not yet been to bed since the night before and he was hoping this would be the last time, so they could get some rest.
The firefighters were called out again, however, in the early hours of Tuesday morning when another blaze flared up in an unexpected area. According to Stanbury, that fire burned the boarding materials that had been used to enclose the area against trespassers.
On Tuesday afternoon, Ichesco was on the scene, talking with another fire investigator. The two officials agreed the amount of collapse and the weather made it hard, if not impossible, to determine the cause of the fire.
The remains of the building stood, encased in ice and open to the elements, outlined starkly against the sky.
A few vehicles came and went, most containing men who walked around the building in silence, grim expressions marking their faces.
Ichesco said when the weather turns warmer and the ice begins to melt even what remains standing will begin to crumble.
"It's a shame," Ichesco said. "A real shame."
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