Five departments called to battle empty medical building fire Friday

Firefighters from five area departments spent more than two hours Friday afternoon battling a fire at a vacant medical building in north Corbin.

West Knox Fire Department was initially paged to the scene at the medical building off of U.25E near the intersection with U.S. 25W at approximately 1:20 p.m.

“There was heavy smoke when we got there,” said West Knox Fire Chief Darryl Baker. “Within a couple of minutes flames hard broken through the roof.”

Corbin, Lily, Keavy and Bailey Switch Fire departments were paged for assistance.

Baker said firefighters had to use tankers to shuttle water to the scene from a fire hydrant across the highway.

“We couldn’t shut down the four-lane to run a hose across it,” Baker explained.

Firefighters had the flames knocked down in about an hour and were on scene until approximately 3:35 p.m. performing salvage and overhaul.

Baker said the vacant building had bars on all of the windows and chains on the doors in an effort to keep people from breaking inside, but the bars had been pulled away from at least one of the windows in order for trespassers to gain entry.

“The owner said he could not keep people out of it,” Baker said.

Utilities had been disconnected from the building.

Firefighters have not determined what caused the fire.