ELY- When the log cabin next to the Wintergreen retail store caught on fire Monday night, Ely firefighters had it out before Fire Engine One could arrive at the scene. The fire in Ely’s downtown district was just one block away from the city’s fire hall.
Ely’s firefighters were paged at 8:09 p.m. for a fire reported on the porch at the Northern Toboggan Co. at 203 E. Sheridan St., next door to Wintergreen Northern Wear.
“The fire was on the outside of the building,” said Assistant Fire Chief Ryan Callen, who served as incident commander. “The fire included a planter box,” he said.
“We’re lucky that someone called it in right away,” Callen added. “If the fire had started at midnight, I think the outcome would have been more dire.”
Firefighters on the department’s hummer were the first on the scene along with two Ely police officers. Using fire extinguishers and hoses, the personnel on hand had the small fire out quickly.
The flower box that was on fire was detached from the wooden logs of the building’s front façade and doused on the side lawn. The firefighters used a chainsaw to shave burnt wood off the log where the flower box was mounted.
Fire Chief David Marshall and Callen believe that the likely cause of the fire was a cigarette butt left in the flower box. The porch of the log cabin is a place where passers-by often stop in the evening to rest on benches and demo models of the store’s furniture products.
Both the building at 203 E. Sheridan St. and the Wintergreen store next door are owned by the Northern Goods Company LLC, which is the business entity that owns Wintergreen Northern Wear.
The Northern Toboggan Company wasn’t open for business on Tuesday after the fire. The staff of Wintergreen had the door open and a fan set up to air out the smokey smell from interior. According to the sewing room manager at Wintergreen, the store doesn’t open every day and operates more like a showroom for the toboggan, snowshoe, and furniture business also owned by Northern Goods Company.
Ely firefighters doused the wooden logs on the front of 203 E. Sheridan St. where a flower box and a small portion of the front façade caught fire on Monday night. The remains of the burnt flower box, which the firefighters removed from the building’s porch, are on the grass in front of Ely Police Officer Courtney Olson. photo by C. Clark