RCFD Battles Midnight Structure Fire

No injuries reported, cause under investigation

Rapid City, S.D. - Crews from four Rapid City fire stations battled a structure fire in the 400 block of North Spruce St. on the city's north-side. At 11:54 pm Thursday night, Rapid City/Pennington County 9-1-1 dispatched a report of a structure fire in the area of E. Denver and N. Spruce Streets. Initial callers reported flames and smoke coming from the building.

Within moments, crews arrived on scene at 420 North Spruce St. to find heavy smoke and flames showing from the wood-frame, residential dwelling. Bystanders reported the structure to be un-occupied. Crews making entry into the building performed multiple searches to confirm that there were indeed no occupants inside the building. None were found and no injuries to civilian or Fire Service personnel were reported.

It took crews about 30 minutes to access and extinguish all of the fire inside the structure. Crews remained on scene for a total of about 3 hours to ensure no hot spots remained. 

The cause of the fire is under investigation. 

Responding to the fire were crews from Stations 1, 3, 4 and 7. Pennington County Fire Administrator Jerome Harvey was on scene to assist the Incident Commander. Also responding to the fire was Pennington County Search and Rescue, the Rapid City Police Department, Montana Dakota Utilities and Black Hills Energy. 

For questions related to this release, please contact Rapid City Fire Department Public Information Officer Jim Bussell at (605)-394-4180. No updates to this release are anticipated at this time.

Above: Crews work to remove glass from a window to help ventilate the structure.

Above: Heavy smoke billows from the structure back-lit by emergency lights from apparatus parked on North Spruce St. 

Above: The crew from Truck 1 works to force open an exterior door to the basement of the structure to search for potential victims. 

Above: Jacob Maggart (lt) and Andrew Rasmussen (rt) from Squad 1 extinguish exterior hot spots.

Above: First arriving crews found heavy smoke and fire conditions in the structure.

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