Monday, September 20, 2010

Sunny Jim plant fire

I remember the roofers were right on our butts. I had been called in as an extra body to get ahead of them. The building was an old flat roof warehouse. We ripped off the old crumbling black tar with a layer of insulation under it. The roofers were so close we could feel the heat from their propane torches. Not a good thing when your wearing a paper suit, rubber boots and respirators. The idea was to have us rip the roof and have the roofers install new material right to our edge so if it rained there wouldn't be much leakage. We told the roofers to back off so we could get ahead and by the end of the day we had the roof ripped. Underneath was old heavy tongue and groove wood. Always reminded me of being on an old wooden boat deck. This was Feb 19, 1997. The next day the roofers torch caught the building on fire. That fire destroyed the then much noticed Sunny Jim sign and a good part of the warehouse. I laugh in that sick sad way like when you're reminded of a lot of work gone for not.
From a Seattle Times article in 1997:
Before the fire began, workers were repairing dry rot on the roof of the Transportation Department's building, said Jun Quan, associate architect for Seattle's executive services department. He said he believed the fire was started by the torches the crews used.

Believed it was started by torches? I know it was. They almost caught us on fire.

1 comment:

The Blog Fodder said...

Cool. I learned about Torch on roofing for the last business plan i worked on. it really does start a lot of buildings on fire. Now I think they insist the first layer at least be modified membrane which is self adhering?