09-09-2012 Overnight Fire in Rivermont

Around 1:30 this morning, a fire broke out in a storage building behind a house at 818 Manchester Drive in the Rivermont community.

Chattanooga police officers were the first on the scene. They woke up James Bullard and his wife, and with their family dog, got out of the house uninjured.

Captain Eric Gordon with Quint 16 said the fire appears to have started around a storage building, and then spread to the rear of the house. As three additional fire companies arrived on the scene, the firefighters worked to get the fire out on the house, and extinguish the fire on the storage building.

The fire damage was contained to the rear of the house. Captain Gordon said the family had been using a fire pit near the storage building earlier in the evening. Most of the wood had burned up, but they left it unattended with hot embers.

Captain Gordon said there was scrap wood near the fire pit that led to the storage building. Captain Gordon believes the embers may have ignited the scrap wood, which then spread to the storage building and house. An estimate on the dollar loss was not available.

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