Second fire strikes Little David's

Mount Airy firefighters responded to a blaze Tuesday night at Little David’s Carpet Outlet, which had been the location a major fire in December.

The latest incident at 110 E. Wilson St. is a by-product of the earlier blaze that broke out on Dec. 22. It caused a half-million dollars in damages and forced the temporary closure of the carpet business and Mayberry-related attractions housed in the same building.

Tuesday’s fire resulted from an effort to tear down the back side of the structure which had been damaged during the one in December, Fire Chief Zane Poindexter explained.

A representative of Ultimate Environmental — a business contracted for the demolition by the Little David’s owners — called an off-duty lieutenant with the Mount Airy Fire Department Tuesday about 7 p.m. concerning what appeared to be a minor matter.

The Ultimate Environmental employee advised that while engaged in the tear-down process, personnel were using a torch to cut some beams and had a small fire in the roof area.

That individual asked for city fire personnel to respond with “no lights and siren” to come wet it down for them, according to Poindexter.

“We do this quite often with construction,” he said.

That request was not made by dialing 911 and therefore not treated as an emergency, which could have appeared to observers that the firefighters’ response time was slow.

“It did take us awhile,” Poindexter acknowledged Wednesday afternoon regarding the reaction by department personnel. “They were actually just sitting down to eat supper.”

But firefighters did arrive on the scene in a matter of minutes and found a large section of the roof ablaze.

“We then punched a full alarm assignment for that address,” Poindexter added. “Apparently, the wind got up a few moments after the phone call and air flow caused that fire to grow quickly, so by the time our units arrived we had a working structure fire again.”

The situation was brought under control in about 45 minutes with the help of an excavator that was on site.

Poindexter said no structural damage was caused Tuesday night since the area affected was involved in the demolition.

“Smoke did get back up front from where they already had it cleansed,” the fire chief said Wednesday regarding recovery efforts from the earlier blaze.

“That would be the only cost associated with last night’s fire.”

The demolition crew was expected to resume work at the site Wednesday and possibly also be there today.