Fire at West Tennessee Business
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A raging fire fueled explosions inside a West Tennessee business on Tuesday afternoon. “I just didn’t want to go in because I knew it was too big a fire for me to go in and fight it,” said Mike Jones, who was the first one to see the fire. Shortly after that, he said the explosions started. “We heard a big boom in the office and then heard it again because we thought it was the guys moving equipment and there goes like, the 2nd or 3rd boom and I go running out and saw the smoke coming out of the building,” said employee, Tyra Brown. LPS Equipment and Acquisition Co. repairs old sawmill and machine equipment to resell. Jones said that meant there were lots of tools and machinery to catch on fire in that shop. “We are thinking it may have happened in the acetylene room. There was room in the back of the building that an employee told me it is a possibility of it starting there when he looked in,” said Carroll County Fire Chief Terry Bradshaw. The owner of LPS said employees actually left a few minutes early on Tuesday because it was payday, five minutes before the building was engulfed in flames. Fire officials said with the propane tanks in the machine shop things could have gotten a lot worse. “Oh my gosh. That is all you could do. Our mouths dropped. There was nothing to do but to watch it burn,” added Brown. Company owners said they could not begin to put a dollar figure on their loss. LPS employees said they would go to work on Wednesday at their other location in Carroll County. Investigators said they would continue to look into what exactly ignited the fire.
