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Fire damages apartment, businesses

Tim Leeds Havre Daily News [email protected]

An early-afternoon fire Wednesday caused extensive damage to an apartment on 2nd Street and damaged an adjacent law office and grocery store, Havre Fire Chief Dave Sheppard said this morning. Sheppard said that at this point foul play is not suspected, although the cause of the fire has not been confirmed. “That is still under investigation. We have located the room of origin,” he said. He said that the apartment was occupied, but the occupants were not at home when the fire started. No one was injured, he said. Margie Morse, who owns McLean's Grocery with her husband, Rodger Morse, said this morning they are working to clean up the store. “We didn't have extensive damage, but we had smoke damage,” she said. It was too early this morning to say when the store would be ready to return to regular business, but Morse said she thinks the clean - Up will be fairly quick. “That's what our hope is,” she added. Sheppard said the building that houses The Randolph Law Firm and Piocos Law Firm on 2nd Avenue, which shares a common roof with the apartment, also sustained damage. Neither Randy Randolph nor Frank Piocos, who operate the law office, could be reached for comment this morning. Sheppard said 13 personnel using two fire engines and an ambulance as well as a fire department squad vehicle responded to the fire at 6:39 p.m. They remained at the site until about 10:45 p.m., he said. The flame damage was contained to a single room in the apartment, but the other rooms sustained significant heat and smoke damage, he said. Most of the damage to the adjacent buildings was due to smoke, Sheppard said, although some water damage also occurred to the law office. The firefighters had to peel back part of the common metal roof to fight the flames in the apartment building, he added. Sheppard said the residents said they planned to spend the night in a local hotel and to contact the Red Cross this morning.

 

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