Firewall Prevents Blaze From Spreading

Firefighters arrived at the home in the 4400 block of Wimberly Drive around 4 A.M. The two alarm blaze took 40 firefighters nearly and hour to put out. The townhome was completely destroyed. But the unit next door only suffered minimal damage, thanks to a built-in firewall. "You have 1 hour,2 hours, an hour and a half rated walls. That gives that room time to contain that fire, for that period of time, instead of spreading throughout the building," said Pat Dyas, Assistant Chief of Fire Prevention. Firefighters at the scene say the firewall is probably what prevented the residence next door from going up in flames. "You can see where the fire actually stopped because of the firewall. Most apartments and multi-family dwellings don`t have that because there`s an extra cost involved," said Assistant Fire Chief Brian Crawford. Property owner Dan Wimberly sees firewalls as a necessity. "It would be inept on our part not to put them there, knowing that you have people living in such close proximity," said Wimberly. The firewalls were a part of the original building plan, when the property was constructed 6 years ago. An extra safeguard that residents didn`t even know they had, until now. "Very glad to know that we had a firewall here. And thank god that the family wasn`t here. Because of this great great tragedy," said resident Debora Thompson. The cause of the fire is still under investigation.