SHUQUALAK, Miss.—Last night, at around 10:30 p.m, when Shuqualak Fire Department Chief Leon McClendon was turning over to sleep for the night, his radio went off, alerting him of a fire at the Shuqualak Lumber Company. He swiftly leapt out of bed, put on his firefighting uniform and called his assistant chief, Harry Jenkins.
Coincidentally, McClendon’s house is close enough to the local planing mill that he could see the bright orange blaze from his back door. He drove the remaining distance to the scene, where the heat was so intense that McClendon had to throw his truck in reverse and back up to prevent the vehicle’s paint from peeling.
“We have never had that kind of fire here in Noxubee County,” the fire chief told the Mississippi Free Press today. “That was a big one there.”
‘We Went All Night Long’
Reinforcements came in the form of the Macon Fire Department, which brought five trucks and 20 firemen. On the site, McClendon and others discovered that two kilns—buildings used for drying lumber—had caught on fire.
“We hesitated a few minutes to wait for (the) county to cut the power—water and power don’t mix,” McClendon said. “We started pumping water. I imagine we pumped over a hundred thousand gallons of water on, and we went all night long.”
Firefighters managed to tamp down the fire by 5:30 a.m, despite the cold weather. Less than an hour later, though, after the team had returned to the station, they received word that the fire had blazed to life once again, the chief described.
Monday night’s fire in Shuqualak, Miss., destroyed one kiln and damaged another at the Shuqualak Lumber Company Planer Mill Division, which Fire Department Chief Leon McClendon said is very important to the community and its economy. Photo by Harry Jenkins
After another hour of fighting the fire, the group had tamed the flames enough that they would not cause any further problems. While no one was hurt in the fire, one kiln was completely destroyed. The second that had caught on fire was deemed salvageable, and the remaining kiln