Staff writer
An unattached two-car garage, a Chevrolet S10 pickup, and a Monte Carlo were destroyed by a fire that ignited around 3:30 p.m. Thursday at 12 Random Rd. behind the former Kingfisher Inn building at Marion County Lake.
Billowing black smoke was visible from miles away but Marion fire chief Mike Regnier said no one was injured in the blaze, including homeowner Ed Jeffrey.
Jeffrey sat in a folding chair watching the fire destroy his garage as Marion EMS personnel administered oxygen and monitored his condition.
“The whole building was engulfed and eventually collapsed,” Regnier said. “The smoke didn’t help Ed’s respiratory problems.”
He said Jeffrey was not in the garage when the fire started.
Before the fire subsided, firefighters from Marion, Hillsboro, and Florence pulled apart sections of the garage’s wall paneling to create holes to extinguish flames.
At one point, several firefighters dodged a falling wall that sat closest to Jeffrey’s house.
Regnier said Jeffrey’s house, which sat about 10 feet from the smoky inferno, was soaked with water as a precaution, but the fire did not damage the house.
Regnier said the cause of the fire is still under investigation.