There was a large outbuilding fire in the 24000 block of Road L on Sunday afternoon.
Nobody was injured, and it didn’t spread to the house on that same property: It was just the outbuilding that burned.
“As of this point, the fire cause is still under investigation, but the building was a complete loss. When units arrived on scene, it was already well involved with fire,” said Battalion Chief Rick Spencer of the Cortez Fire Protection District.
Cortez firefighters were dispatched at 2:57 p.m., and they left the scene at 8:04 pm.
Dispatchers had the fire under control within an hour, though, thanks to the added help from three mutual aid districts – Lewis Arriola, Dolores and Mancos Fire Protection Districts.
There was a lot of stuff in the shop itself. Once the fire was knocked down, responders brought in a backhoe to get into the building and move around debris to address the pockets where there was still fire burning, Spencer said.
Spencer reiterated his gratitude for the mutual aid help and said he posted about it on Facebook to let the people know what happened as soon as possible. He said there was some confusion and talk of this being a house fire, but it was not: It was just an outbuilding fire.
“We like to get the factual information out as soon as we can to make sure the public knows what it was,” he said.
Last week, CFPD received 47 calls, which works out to be 6.7 per day. They were the first on the scene 69% of the time.
