CORAL, Mich. — A 150-year-old church-turned-home burned down in downtown Coral as reported by the Greenville Daily News.
Located at 4878 N. Bailey Road, the former United Methodist Church just turned 150 years old last year, it was built in 1873.
The Greenville Daily News reported that the Lakeview District Fire Department was working on putting out a septic business fire in Belvidere Twp. on Wednesday morning when they were paged to the church fire.
It was also reported that the Coral community was without power for some time as a result of the fire.
Lakeview Fire Chief Pat Carr told the Greenville Daily News that Consumers Energy arrived at the scene in the beginning to turn the power off to the building. They then decided the three-phase line was going to be hot and that it needed to be de-energized.
Carr told the Greenville Daily News once the line was de-energized, the whole town was without power.
“They need to inspect it before they turn it back on so we decided to let this front burn, we thought it would be faster to let it cave in to get it out of the way so Consumers can inspect that line," Carr told the news.
Carr told the Greenville Daily News that the occupant was in the residence and said something about his dryer blowing up in the basement. He said he hasn't confirmed this yet, but it's clear the fire started in the basement.
He also told the Greenville Daily News once the fire got above the basement and went into the old church structure, it became impossible to fight.
"It was full of smoke, it was really hard for the firefighters inside to determine what was in there and there were flames burning over them," Carr told the Greenvile Daily News. "We just got to the point where we said, 'There’s nothing in there to save, we’re just risking people’s lives' and just pulled everybody out.”
The Greenville Daily News said Carr reported there were no injuries in the fire.
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