FAIRMONT, W.Va. — The Fairmont Fire Department was called to the former site of the JG Lampkin Funeral Home on Pennsylvania Ave around 9 Thursday night.
Captain Dustin Lambert the fire was reported at 8:57 p.m. and required a full call out of the city fire forces.
“We had to recall both shifts that were off duty to backfill,” Lambert said. “Initially our priority is to attack the fire, then we prioritize swapping our firefighters out to make sure they don’t get exhausted, and also staffing our city stations to make sure we can handle other responses.”
Lambert said firefighters and three engines arrived within minutes to find the 100-year-old brick wood structure fully involved.
“When they arrived with a couple minutes they found heavy fire on the second floor of the building,” Lambert said. “It was already substantially involved when they got there.”
The building had been used to store a large volume of antiques. Since the building had been repurposed to store antique furniture many of the doors were blocked. Firefighters had to quickly determine which doors could be used in order to continue the offensive attack.
“That slowed them down a little bit,” Lambert said. “When we show up to a fire we don’t know which doors are used and ones that are not, so they had trouble making access to the building through some doors that aren’t typically used.”
After about 30 minutes safety concerns switched the firefighters into a defensive mode. The fire determined to be under control at midnight, but crews remained on the scene well into Friday addressing hot spots in the building. Pennsylvania Avenue remained restricted to one lane through Friday morning.
“But, they were in offensive mode for about 30 minutes,” Lambert said. “The amount of fire load, or the amount of things inside the building was pretty substantial and that led to a pretty good sized fire, so after about 30 minutes they switched to a defensive mode.”
Lambert said investigators are sifting through the rubble to determine the cause. The building and contents are thought to be a total loss.
“There was nothing suspicious after we investigated it further and interviewed witnesses,” Lambert said. “As of right the exact cause is not determined it will still be investigated further, but there was nothing suspicious about it.”
The JG Lampkin Funeral Home was founded in 1929 and served the Black community for nearly 100 years.