Smoke billowing from an attic vent alerted passersby to a fire this afternoon.
Witnesses said they saw a man run up to the building to alert those inside that the building was on fire.
Police evacuated the building and Newton County Ambulance personnel were on hand, but in the end the fire stayed contained to the attic area of Classy Collectibles, formerly the location of Cherished Moments, at Walnut and Wornall Streets behind Boulevard Bank in Neosho.
There were no working smoke detectors in the building.
The fire department got the call at 1:04 p.m. and left the scene nearly two hours later.
Eight fire personnel responded, six on duty, fire chief Mike Eads and a standby member was called in to man the station. The fire was electrical in origin. A staple that was punched through attic wiring shorted it out. That kind of problem would be hard to predict, said Captain Brad Morris.
“That’s something that nobody would ever know because it was under all that blown insulation,” he said. The fire was contained in the attic and the building had minimal damage. The department’s report estimates $7,000 damage to the building, mostly in the attic. The building is owned by Lisa Dixon.
