At approximately 11:07 p.m. on Monday, July 24, 2023, firefighter responded to a sprinkler water flow alarm at National Laundry, located at 700 Crescent Circle. No one was in the facility at the time, and the cause was unintentional.
Great Falls Fire Rescue (GFFR) Assistant Fire Chief Mike McIntosh stated, "The fire alarm system detected water flowing through the sprinkler system. That came in at 11:07 and our first crews were dispatched at 11:11.
Engine 4 arrived on scene to find the sprinkler system activated and heavy smoke conditions inside the building.
McIntosh said, "The first arriving crews got on scene in four minutes, and when they arrived, there wasn't anything showing from three sides of the building. Our tower truck coming from Station 2 came in and they were able to see some smoke coming from the roof of the building. That's when we recognized that there was a fire within the building."
While making entry into the building, firefighters came across two men who were attempting to put the fire out. The two men were National Laundry employees who had been notified of the alarm activation by the fire alarm monitoring company. They were led out of the building, and were assessed and released by medics from Great Falls Emergency Services at the scene.
Engine 4 had the fire under control at about midnight, and crews then worked to ventilate the building.
McIntosh said despite the smoky conditions, the sprinkler system did its job and held the fire in check, keeping it from spreading.
As for the cause of the fire, McIntosh said, "It came from mops that were in a dryer that came out and they were left together warm so they spontaneously combusted."
NOTE: the original version of this story stated that the mop heads were left in the dryer; in fact, the mop heads had been taken out of the dryer.
McIntosh said while it isn't common for GFFR to respond to these types of calls, it does happen occasionally in the laundry service business.
When GFFR received the call, they dispatched two fire engines and a battalion chief that arrived within four minutes. The other two crews didn't arrive until after 10 minutes as they were dispatched "non-emergent." Once the crews found out they were dealing with a working structure fire, a second alarm struck, taking an additional hour to have crews back in place to handle additional calls made by the city.
Great Falls Fire Chief Jeremy Jones noted the challenges that come with response times while maintaining enough staff.
Jones stated, "We were very fortunate last night that we had a commercial working structure fire that we're able to contain and that was really because of the life safety systems that were put into place to act exactly how they were supposed to that really kept that fire in check so our personnel could arrive on the scene. It's been out there that at any given time, there's 13 firefighters on duty in the city of Great Falls. A fire of this size in a complex in a warehouse of this magnitude. We should really be sending over 30 firefighters, too. So within just over 5 minutes, we had the first engine on scene. They entered the building and were able to determine that they had a working fire which brought in additional on-duty crews."
He added, "The emphasis here is the lack of coverage on the back side. Our shift commander and battalion chief ended up striking a second alarm to handle the rest of the city, but we went almost an hour before we had crews back in place to be able to handle the additional calls and needs for community service within our city ... Every time we have a resource, or an engine company tied up with any type of emergency, it really limits what we can respond to because this department is staffed for a single family, 2000 square foot home fire. Not a 50,000 to 100,000 square foot warehouse fire.
Jones also expressed the importance of safety due to high winds and temperatures.
"The fuels within this community and surrounding areas are just drying out rapidly, turning overnight," he said. "We are on the cusp of starting to have a lot of major wildfires. We've already seen some crop up in and around north central Montana. We just ask the public to be cognizant in what they're doing and to be safe and to make sure that whatever they do doesn't cause a fire that's left unattended."
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