Small fire at restaurant closes block

Published 8:39 pm Wednesday, November 29, 2017

Danville firefighters were dispatched to Jane Barleycorn’s Market & Bar, at 128 S. Fourth St., at about 3 p.m. Tuesday after a report of heavy smoke. Battalion Chief Mike McCurdy said something had caused the facade of the building to ignite.

“It was a small fire that produced a lot of smoke,” he said. “It didn’t extend to anything else.”

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While the cause of the fire is still under investigation, McCurdy said it appears it was accidental. He couldn’t say what caused the fire, but explained that there was some deteriorating wood and something like a tossed cigarette butt could have been the source.

The block to was shut down to traffic for a while, creating quite a back-up in downtown Danville.

“That building is a big building and is tied into others. We wanted to be really aggressive and make sure it didn’t extend elsewhere,” McCurdy said.

It was caught and extinguished rather quickly — McCurdy said the fire did not pose a threat to the rest of the building.