MURRAY – Around 4 a.m. Saturday, hours after the amateur fireworks shows that capped Independence Day celebrations across the city were long over, families living near the intersection of Ash and North Cherry streets were startled awake by frantic knocks at the door from neighbors, alerting them of the raging house fire on the corner.
According to scanner communications obtained from murrayscanner.com, the Murray Fire Department (MFD) was dispatched to the area at 4:10 a.m. for a “fully-involved structure fire, flames through the roof.” The caller advised that a homeless man normally inhabits the front porch, but she did not see him at the time of the call.
Videos and photos provided to The Sentinel show the home, located at 408 N Cherry St., fully engulfed in flames before first responders arrived, the earliest of which was timestamped at 4:09 a.m. Sirens can be heard in the distance on a video taken at 4:14 a.m. In the next video, taken three minutes later, approaching sirens can still be heard, but a fire truck can also be seen parked near the fire hydrant closest to the structure.
Sarah Hughes lives diagonally across the intersection. She said that, upon seeing the inferno, she loaded her three children in the car and took them to their father’s house.
Laura McDaniel, who lives directly across the street from the house, stayed, first, taking shelter with her family in their car down the road. She said that her home never lost power, but the internet did go out for a brief period of time.
At 4:31 a.m., fire fighters reported to dispatch that the fire had been “knocked down” but was not yet extinguished. It is not clear when the fire was fully extinguished.
Late Saturday morning, neighbors, including Hughes and McDaniel, at the scene told The Sentinel that the house – along with the three houses immediately to its south – have been abandoned for many years; however, a man named Charles frequently squatted in the residence. He was reportedly not injured in the fire.
While some suggested there were suspicions that the fire was intentionally set, most speculated the blaze was instigated by a rogue fireworks spark, noting that several people were setting off fireworks, including mortars, just one block over. Saturday morning, a large pile of spent fireworks could be seen in the back of truck parked on Pine Street, and substantial amounts of debris from aerial fireworks and firecrackers littered the road and sidewalks around the intersection of North Cherry and Pine.
No further details are known at this time. The Sentinel reached out to Fire Chief Eric Pologruto for more information regarding the fire but did not receive a response prior to press time.
