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Fire levels Oak Street workshop By Sean Wolfe and Larry Berteau Ashland Daily Tidings Flames illuminated the Ashland sky and drew scores of 911 calls to response centers as a two-alarm fire gutted a workshop and a storage shed on Oak Street. While the facility fell under county jurisdiction, Ashland Fire & Rescue forces were first on the scene Friday around 10:20 p.m., led by Capt. Bob Cockell. Flames shoot into the sky Friday night as the shop near the Ashland water treatment plant burns to the ground. Ashland Daily Tidings/CHRIS MILLER "We arrived to find the large front portion of the building well involved with fire burning through the roof. It had vented through the roof, and there was a large volume of fire to contend with," Cockell said. The 50x200 foot structure is owned by former NASCAR driver and excavation business owner Harold Hardesty, who used the shop in part to work on his collection of vintage cars. One of those cars, a 1966 Ford Thunderbird was lost in the fire, along with a massive collection of tools. Hardesty was unreachable for comment this morning. Fire crews were hampered in their efforts by downed power lines and the proximity of Bear Creek. Fearing toxic runoff from the shop, and determining that the central building was already a total loss, fire forces pulled back and focused on protecting the building's perimeter. "We had to cut two locks to get in, and downed power lines created an electrical hazard. We came in and used tank water, which did really knock down the body of the fire. Then we worked on keeping the fire from spreading to nearby structures," Cockell said. "Basically a decision was made that the main building was well-involved and there was nothing we could do for that, so rather than pouring extra thousands of gallons on and having that contaminate the run-off into Bear Creek, we decided to let the fire die down by itself, since everything in the building was already lost." Jackson County Fire District No. 5 Division Chief Darin Welburn said Department of Environmental Quality representatives had been called out to review the site, and come up with a clean-up plan. In the meantime, the cause of the blaze is being investigated. "We've learned that a portion of that facility is uninsured, so we can't even venture a dollar loss on the fire. He did lose the shop truck, a T-bird, and a lot of tools," Welburn said. Most of Hardesty's treasure of classic race cars were saved from the flames - they were garaged in open-air carports 100 yards away from the burned building. This morning, Captain Scott Traina of Fire District No. 5 picked through the charred remains looking for a clue as to the fire's origin. Standing in the center of the blackened, gutted building, Traina stomped on the ground. "Usually, where it has burned the most, generally indicates the origin," he said, pointing at the classic Thunderbird that had melted down to a two-foot high reminder of what the old car used to be. "But that should be burned too," he said, pointing to a nearby pot-bellied stove that was relatively intact. All that remained of the rest of the contents were the snarled frame of an old truck and metal wall cabinets - tangled by the heat of the night's flames. "Harold (Hardesty) was devastated," Traina said, referring to the building's owner. "He told me he didn't even have insurance." LINKS: DAILY TIDINGS: Main | News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Opinion | Columnists | AP News | Subscribe | Archives | Weather | Classifieds | Contact Us | Privacy REVELS: Main | Calendar | Dining | Movies | T.V. OTHER: Road Cams Copyright 2003 Ashland Daily Tidings 541.482.3456. 1661 Siskiyou Blvd., Ashland, OR 97520. Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. - Advertisers -