The Saint Paul Condo Blog

There are reasons high-rises don't like charcoal grills!  As it was the likely culprit of the fire that happened this evening at the Pointe of Saint Paul.  From what is known, it looks like someone threw hot embers from a grill down the building's trash chute.  It didn't take long for that to start other trash on fire.

Luckily, the fire was contained to the trash room, because the building has internal sprinklers inside the trash chute.  Fire always sounds scary in a high-rise, but the bigger problem is water damage.  It looks like the Pointe dodged a bullet on the water issue.  The first floor is all tiled and the trash room grades to the back driveway.  The room also has a floor drain, but quickly became overcome with the amount of water coming from the sprinkler system.

The buildings trash compactor was damaged, but other than that everything was back to normal within no time at all.

Sometimes it pays to have an awesome fire station across the street ;)

A big thank you goes out to the men and women of Fire Station No. 8!

EDIT (08/0/08):  Looks like the trash compactor may be out for a while.  BFI was at the building this morning, and it took considerably more damage than initially thought.