Cause of city hall fire still a mystery

Cause of city hall fire still a mystery
Prospect Heights residents report seeing lightning hit building
Originally published Saturday, April 15, 2006

By Nadia Malik and Dave Orrick
Daily Herald Staff Writers

By a neighbor's account, lightning touched down on the Prospect Heights city hall Thursday night, sometime after 10:30 p.m.
Nancy Bredberg said she and her husband had friends over in their backyard, where they had a clear view of the west side of city hall. One of their guests called out when he thought he saw the flash of lightning strike the building's roof.
"It looked like a blue streak," Bredberg said.
However, any talk of a cause for the fire that gutted city hall late Thursday night and early Friday morning was called "speculative" by city officials.
"We had reports of lightning strikes in the area," Fire Chief Donald Gould Jr. said. However, he stressed the investigation hadn't ruled out any possibilities for the fire, including arson and electrical problems.
On Friday, officials spent time clearing out any salvageable documents from the building to set up shop at the police department. They also assured residents that city business would continue.
Meanwhile, residents speculated on a cause.
On Thursday, Matt Rinde, a meteorologist with AccuWeather.com, said there were between 10 and 15 lightning strikes in Prospect Heights and the surrounding area.
"I would say there were several lightning strikes that went through, but the heavier stuff stayed to the south. There were definitely lightning strikes in the area," he said.
Neighbors concurred that the storm that rolled through the city was not major; many said they heard nothing more than a few claps of thunder. Even the neighbors who said they saw the strike didn't hear the loud sound they expected in a lightning strike.
Most said they were awakened by fire trucks responding to an alarm at city hall, 8 N. Elmhurst Road, at just about 10:45 p.m., Gould said.
The fire department, which is around the corner on Camp McDonald Road, was on the scene within two minutes.
The fire crews had to pull out of the building seven minutes later, however, because the roof started to cave in.
Douglas Dean, who lives a few feet from city hall, said at first he saw "just smoke and not much flame at all."
"And then in 10 to 15 minutes, it was enough to toast nine truckloads of marshmallows," he said.
Because of his home's proximity to the fire, paramedics stopped by to make sure nobody was affected by the smoke, which continued to linger Friday.
Gould said his department had to ensure the flames didn't spread to any neighboring houses or trees behind the hall.
Water issues also delayed the firefighters' progress, since Prospect Heights runs on a well system. (See related story.)
Gould said the fire was under control by 1 a.m., but firefighters - who were called from about 25 surrounding departments - remained on the scene to control hot spots that occasionally flared up for the next couple of hours.
Mayor Rodney Pace and City Administrator Matt Zimmerman said they were awakened by calls from the fire department around 11 p.m., notifying them of the situation.
Building the new city hall "was the first line of business after the (new) city council was sworn in three years ago," Pace said. "It was close to all our hearts. To have it look like this was devastating."
Zimmerman said it was a relief, however, that the fire occurred at night and nobody was in the building at the time. Gould said nobody was injured during the fire, but a firefighter was treated on the scene for heat exhaustion.
The scene on Friday attracted a continuous stream of residents walking by with their children and dogs.
Bill Gruber, who lives off nearby Olive Street, first heard the news on television Friday morning and came by to see the damage.
"I turned off Camp McDonald Road and I saw that circle (window) on top of the building ... you could see right through the wall," he said.
The state fire marshal - who is called out to major scenes as a routine procedure - and the Prospect Heights department's investigators continued to work their way through the building Friday.
They were seen examining the camera housing that survived the blaze. The cameras hung from underneath awnings on the front of city hall and may prove to have been the best witnesses to what might have started the fire.
Gould said investigators from the state fire marshal's office quickly hunted down - and found, in apparently working condition - a computer inside city hall that records what the camera sees.
"They went right for it and it looks like they got it," he said.
The fire marshal's investigators declined to comment and Gould and Pace both said they hadn't seen the recordings.
The hope, Gould said, is that if, for example, the fire was caused by a lightning strike, the cameras could have picked up a bright flash.
The building's brick facade, arches and entrances remained standing, but the offices on the west end - which housed the code enforcement, engineering, finance and building and zoning departments as well as the convention and visitors bureau - and the entire roof were destroyed.
The basement, where the city keeps building records, was also flooded with 3 feet of water, possibly leaving documents damaged.
The city called in both Sterling Fire Restoration Ltd. and Midwest Restoration Services to see if any of the paperwork was salvageable.
As city employees and firefighters sifted through the remains of the offices, the documents - such as building and zoning permits, deeds and vehicle sticker reports - were carted away to be dried out.
Pace said residents shouldn't be worried about their documents since they should already have a copy for their own records and many of the files are backed up on computers.
The staff moved into the new city hall - formerly a real estate building - in September 2003. Before that, city workers had been housed in the basement of the police station after the city sold its old city hall at Elmhurst and Camp McDonald roads to Walgreen Co. in 1997.
City workers were moved back to their old location in the basement of the police station Friday morning. Some city employees also are working out of the park district.
Zimmerman said the city's insurance company, the Intergovernmental Risk Management Agency, gave them temporary chairs, desks and computers to work on for now.
Many of the staff's normal computers seemed to have been destroyed, he said, but the server is stored in the police department, so most files are backed up.