. EMILY WEAVER
i eweaver@kingsmountainherald.com
The Kings Mountain Fire
Department burned down
the dilapidated vacant house
at 103 N. Tracy Street, leaving
nothing behind but a crum-
bling foundation and chim-
ney. They started the fire
Thursday morning, August
10, for a training exercise.
Practice burns, as they are
referred to, help firefighters
gain more experience in a
slightly more controlled
environment. Volunteers and
paid officers from KMFD and
other local departments
worked together to battle the
flames they created.
Carolyn Hill grew up in
the house next to 103 N.
Tracy Street. She now owns
the sewing shop, Hang with
Hill, across the street. She
was working on her sewing
as the men were practicing.
“I used to play in that house
as a young girl. It’s a little
sad to see it burned,” she
said.
Kathy Paine from White
Oak Manor drove by the
practice burn on her way to
work. “I don’t see how they
do it out there in the heat,”
she said. “You have to be
very passionate about that
sort of thing.” These men
definitely have passion, not
just for withstanding the heat
and smoke from the flames. .
. but for slaying the fiery
dragon so that lives may be
saved.
Many steps and long hours
were taken in preparation to
make sure that the burn ran
smoothly. A large oak tree in
a neighbor's yard had leaves
and small branches that
grazed the target. If it ignit-
ed, it could have spread a
one-house practice fire into a
two-house emergency. The
men soaked the tree before
they began. After some time,
the fire finally pierced
through the roof and out of
the sides of the attic. Some of
the leaves caught on fire. A
firefighter turned an extra
hose to the burning tree and
continued to soak it through
the rest of the fire. At least
two hoses and sometimes
more were used outside of
the residence to contain the
fire.
A film crew from the State
Fireman’s Association was
on the scene to film the prac-
tice burn. They plan to use
segments of this fire and
KMFD’s next scheduled
practice burn (on August 26)
in some videos and commer-
cials for the State Fireman's
Association.
“We're real fortunate to
have a staff where a lot of us
have been here a long time.
Most of our volunteers have
been here about 10 years or
longer,” said KM Fire Chf.
Frank Burns.
“And we have a very expe-
rienced department overall,”
said Fire Inspector Joey
Davis. KMFD has 8 full-time,
6 part-time and 25 volunteers
and when each man’s years
of experience are added up,
it averages out to be about 15
years of experience per per-
son. But fire practice edu-
cates the rookies and keeps
the experienced ones on their
toes.
“The state requires a mini-
mum of 36 hours of training
a year, but our personnel
average is somewhere
around 101 to 130 hours a
person,” he said. Davis
teaches a class in Columbus
twice a week for three hours
every night. With his classes,
he will exceed 400 hours in
training by the end of the
year. Burns will probably go
over 400 hours too. Those
hours do not include the 40-
hour work week, but are
solely comprised of extra
classes, workshops, practice
burns, conferences, and other
exercises.
On an engine 3 quarter
line, the hose that KMFD
uses, there is about 120
pounds of pressure per sec-
ond (120 psi). “The biggest
truck we have, which is the
ladder truck, as far as pump
capacity, can flow (at most)
2,000 gallons of water a
Elvis Sighting
9-year-old Pearson performs at White Oak
Elvis was spotted
Thursday afternoon at White
Oak Manor. He was brought
back from the grave to per-
form for the residents by a 9-
year-old boy named Jacky
Pearson, who began imper-
sonating the King a few
years ago. “It all started
when he saw the movie Lilo
& Stitch, where Stitch does
his Elvis routine. He saw that
and asked me, ‘What is he
doing?’ I said ‘That's Elvis,’
and from then on he’s been
doing this,” said Jacky’s
father, Butch Pearson.
Jacky’s grandmother,
Elvia, makes all of his jump-
suits, belts, jackets, and
scarves for him. He has
grown out of his first two
jumpsuits and is working on
the third. His mother,
Margaret Pearson, said it is
almost impossible to find
white boots in this region, so
she spray painted his cow-
boy boots white, which he
has also almost outgrown.
Elvia had a collection of Elvis
records that he listened to,
once his curiosity was
peaked. Old videos of the
King of Rock’n’Roll’s per-
formances and movies
inspired his moves.
“He's been performing in
front of people for about a
year now,” his mother,
Margaret, said. “He loves
this.”
“We took him to Graceland
and he about short-circuit-
EMILY WEAVER/ HERALD
99-year-old Jacky Pearson
performs as Elvis at White
Oak Manor.
ed,” Butch said. “He told me,
‘Mom, this is my dream
come true’,” Margaret said.
“He cried at Elvis’s grave
and everything.”
Jacky sang his tunes for the
crowd of nurses and resi-
dents, complete with pelvic
thrusts and gyrating hips. He
wooed the ladies in the
crowd with hugs in between
verses and scarves that he
pulled from around his neck
to give to them, in true Elvis
fashion. During his break, he
went around the room smil-
ing and posing for photo-
graphs with his admirers.
He performed for about an
hour singing classics, like
“You Ain't Nothin’ But a
Hound Dog,” “Suspicious
Minds,” “Blue Suede Shoes,”
and “Burnin” Love.”
“We thought he would
grow out of it. But he still
loves it. I guess there are
worse people he could imi-
tate,” Margaret said.
“He does this continuous-
ly, whether he’s in front of a
crowd or not,” Butch said.
On Friday, August 4, he
performed in front of a
crowd at the old National
Guard Armory in Gastonia,
and Margaret said he
brought the house down.
Kathy Paine, events director
at White Oak Manor, asked
Jacky to come back and per-
form again for them around
Christmastime - he said he
would.
As he was leaving the
building, Paine got on the
intercom and announced,
“Ladies and Gentlemen, if I
can have your attention.
Elvis is now leaving the
building.”
minute. So you're gonna put
a lot of water out in a short
amount of time,” Davis said.
Some hoses at full blast are
able to be held by one strong
person, but others need a few
men to keep the heavy
stream of water steady.
“We'll go in and set a fire
and let it burn for a little
while until everything gets at
its ignition temperature and
lights off. We usually do that
before we let them attack the
fire. It gives them an oppor-
tunity to see, what we call
‘fire behavior,” and what ‘fire
behavior’ actually does,”
Burns said.
Davis pointed out that the
scientific way of looking at a
fire, is that nothing ever
burns. “It’s not burning the
actual material, it’s turning it
into a gas. If you look at a
piece of wood, there's a little
dead spot between the wood
and the flame, well it’s actu-
ally not burning the material,
it’s burning the vapors and
the gases (produced by heat-
ing that material),” he said.
“Everything has an igni-
tion temperature and what
happens is it heats up until it
starts producing vapors. And
when it starts producing
those vapors, it’s actually a
gas and those gases are what
burns,” Burns said, adding
that it is important for a fire-
fighter to be aware of this
“fire behavior.”
A before shot of the dilapidated house on 103 N. Tracy
Street that was reduced to ashes as part of a training
exercise for the Kings Mountain Fire Department and a
few other local firefighters.
A fire needs heat, oxygen
and fuel to burn. Once it has
those three components and
begins to rage in a house
with furniture, the materials
inside will get heated up
until its ignition temperature
is reached, then everything
will combust in flames. “We
saw that first hand at train-
ing fires and that’s one of the
things that you hope to
accomplish, when you do
have a training fire, that the
firemen actually get an
opportunity to see what a
flashover will actually do,”
Burns said.
In other training, they also
learn that different colors of
smoke indicate different
materials burning. Very dark
smoke is the burning of
petroleum products and syn-
thetics. Black smoke indi-
cates a pretty big fire. Smoke
with a green tint to it, indi-
cates a possible backdraft
effect and when black smoke
turns to white smoke it indi-
cates that water is being
thrown on the fire.
The practice fire, spewed
forth heat, smoke and a lot of
ash. Within minutes after the
fire peaked its nasty head
through the roof, it had col-
lapsed it. Firemen tired by
the heat and sweating ashes
from their exercise, rested
briefly in the shade and
enjoyed the sudden burst of
rain that a cloudless sky had
granted.
EMILY WEAVER / HERALD
Local officials, dignitaries, and employees celebrated the opening of Kings Mountain's
new electric power substation on Margrace Road Tuesday. It will provide power for about
3,000 houses. Mayor Rick Murphrey (middie) spoke of the importance of the new substa-
and thanked the electric department for all of their hard
work. County Manager Marilyn Sellers holds the bow.
tion as Kings Mountain grows,
Middle School
orientation set
Kings Mountain Middle
School orientation will be
Tuesday, Aug. 22 from 1-3
p-m.
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CS A 3 i
KM WEATHER REPORT
®
By Kenneth Kitzmiller
Aug. 9-15 Year Ago
Total precipitation 2.96 J9
Maximum 1 day 2.12 (10th) .79 (9th)
Month to date 3.55 1.72
Year to date 24.82 32.39
Low temperature 63 (14th) 70 (14th)
High temperature 90 (9th) 94 (15th)
Avg. temperature 75.9 81.0
_TheHer
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