MORGANTOWN — Andrea Straight lost her dog, Mighty, and all her possessions in the July 10 fire that destroyed Bon Vista Apartments Building A.
In fact, she explained, the explosion some of the building’s residents reported hearing that day came from her unit.
While the exact cause of the fire remains unknown, the fire is the cause that brought Straight before both Morgantown City Council and the Monongalia County Commission to ask, among other things, why her and the inhabitants of the building’s 11 other units had to watch their homes burn while volunteer fire crews from Westover, Star City and Granville made their way across town.
The building was old. It didn’t have sprinklers or fire breaks to slow the spread of the flames, which quickly engulfed the entire roof of the two-story structure.
All told, seven of the county’s 12 volunteer departments would end up responding to the scene.
The only area department that didn’t respond was the one closest to the blaze.
Bon Vista Apartments, located at 1325 Stewartstown Rd., is just outside the city of Morgantown. The building that burned is maybe 100 yards from the city’s 5th Ward, a portion of which sits just on the other side of Stewartstown Road according to the city’s ward map.
Based on the existing mutual aid agreement, the MFD will assist when requested. Because the fire occurred on a Sunday, it was believed the volunteer response would be adequate and Morgantown was not called in.
In response to Straight’s comments, Morgantown City Councilor Brian Butcher and Monongalia County Commission President Tom Bloom said they plan to pull together a meeting to look at how the city and county departments communicate.
“Basically one of the things we felt like we could make an immediate impact on was greater cooperation,” Butcher said.
“We know they already have mutual aid agreements with the city firefighters but we’re going to see if maybe there’s something we could do between the multiple volunteer fire departments we have on the outskirts of the city and the city’s fire department to try to help with that response time and make sure they’re cooperating a little bit better.”
Straight said it’s extremely fortunate that nobody was hurt or worse. She said she doesn’t understand why the building didn’t have sprinklers or other fire safety measures and questioned why the closest fire department can’t respond to a burning building.
“We all lost everything,” she said, adding “I don’t know what can be done, but something needs to be done.”
