Thursday morning fire sets construction plans back

RAPID CITY, S.D. (KEVN) - An apartment building under construction on Philadelphia Street caught on fire. Thursday morning.

When the Rapid City Fire Department arrived at the Tallgrass Apartments, they were able to extinguish the main body of the fire in around two minutes. Before the crew could finish stamping out the rest of the fire, they needed to eliminate any hazards. Above the fire, there was sheetrock that the construction crew was preparing to use, but the fire damaged the upper level.

“Unfortunately the fire was directly underneath that and had caused weakening of the structure and so the extra weight above the guys trying to extinguish it, was an unnecessary risk. So, we just wanted to mitigate that in moving it. The safest possible way we could do that was by moving a piece of machinery and just bringing it to that next level below,” said Battalion Chief Keith Trojanowski, Rapid City Fire Department.

The crew continued cleaning up the area, leaving it safe for the construction crew to take over. The fire department says there were reports of people in the building at the time of the call, but on arrival, all the people were safe..

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