Evening Sun: Weitco workers in shock after fire
Fire investigator Bradley Schriver on Thursday inspects the burned remains of one of two Weitco Stairs buildings destroyed by fire earlier that day in Orrtanna. (Evening Sun photo by Dick Bloom)
By SETH GOLDSTEIN
Evening Sun Reporter
Sales representative Andy Frey heard about the fire at about 5:30 a.m.
But he was told the road to the Weitco Stairs factory was shut down, so he didn't get to the scene until 8 a.m.
"By 7:30 a.m. I was climbing the walls," Frey said. "At that point, I couldn't take it anymore, so I got in my car and came out."
Frey and other employees of the factory near Orrtanna stared in disbelief Thursday afternoon at the mangled pile of metal that was once their livelihood.
"That's the way fire really is," said Terry Danner, another sales representative. "It's a natural phenomenon that man can't control. It really shows you who's in control and it's not man."
Firefighters responded to an alarm at the factory at 251 Silo Road at about 3 a.m. The Adams County and Pennsylvania State Police fire marshals are continuing to investigate and neither would comment on a cause or provide a damage estimate.
But Cashtown Fire Chief Tom Norman said they don't suspect the fire, which destroyed two of the factory's five buildings, was intentionally set. Both the office and the warehouse were destroyed, Norman said.
Despite the extensive damage, the factory workers were optimistic.
"There isn't much more we can do, except move on and rebuild. Luckily (owner Steve) Whiteman was able to save some records and some computers before the fire got really bad," Danner said. "Thank God no one was hurt."
Dave Masenheimer, an employee at the factory for two years, said the company will rebuild.
"We're going to limp along until we're up to full strength, but we'll keep going," he said. "We still have the back half of the building intact, so we're going to work out of there."
Frey agreed.
"Steve is an incredible individual and I think we have a really good core," he said. "Everyone will rally around him and we're going to rebuild and come back bigger and better than ever."
Masenheimer was there from the start. He responded to the automatic fire alarm at 3 a.m.
There, he met Whiteman and the Cashtown fire company. They walked around the factory perimeter.
"We didn't see anything to start with," Masenheimer said. "Then we went in and saw the flames. Within an hour the whole building was ablaze."
Norman said flames began coming out of the eaves of the roof within the first hour. The fire soon spread through the entire building.
"In between the ceiling and the roof there were fans to take hot air out of the building," Norman said. "The fans were set to turn on automatically when the temperature reached 140 degrees. So when the fire reached that temperature the fans activated and spread the fire across the entire building. At that point we had to evacuate."
The fire was being fought inside the building, but after it began to spread, firefighters retreated outside, Norman said. The fire was deemed extinguished 12 hours later, but crews were called back to the scene around 4:30 p.m., when it rekindled.
There were around 150 firefighters and more than 70 pieces of fire apparatus on the scene from more than 25 fire companies from six counties. About 25 tankers were used to haul water from Knouse Foods, located about two miles away from the fire.
Tony Shelleman, a volunteer Cashtown firefighter who lives down the street from the factory, said the fire was extremely hot.
"It was intense," he said. "The hardest thing was getting water onto the fire since there isn't any water source around here. We had probably 20 trucks running water back and forth.
"One guy said he made eight trips. That's a lot of trips."
Whiteman estimated that in addition to the destroyed buildings, a couple thousand dollars of product was lost in the blaze.
"I'm still in shock," Masenheimer said after hot spots were doused. "It still hasn't sunk in. It was unreal."
Contact Seth Goldstein at sgoldstein@eveningsun.com.
