Long-Time Sand Springs Business Damaged By Fire

A long-time, family-owned gas station in Sand Springs is badly damaged after an overnight fire. 

Friday, June 19th 2015, 7:52 am

By: News On 6

Long-Time Sand Springs Business Damaged By Fire

A long-time, family-owned gas station in Sand Springs is badly damaged after an overnight fire. Fire investigators haven't released an official cause, but they may have an idea of how it started.

The Shamrock gas station at Broadway and Washington has been owned by the same family for over 40 years. The owner has been at the station for several hours Friday morning and says depending on the insurance adjuster's reports, he may or may not open back up.

The fire started around 10:30 Thursday.

"Crews arrived to find heavy smoke and fire coming out of the end of this gas station, a small, single-story gas station," said Sand Springs Fire Chief Mike Wood.

Fire Chief Mike Wood said they think it may have started near the cash register because some paper was too close to power cords.

There is major damage to the inside of the store, but we don't have a dollar amount of much damage. Fortunately, the store was closed at the time and no customers were inside.

It's considered very fortunate that the gasoline didn't make this fire much worse. The owner said the risk was very low because of the number of safety features built into gas stations these days.

"That is a potential if it gets hot enough to the pumps or the vents for the tanks which are typically on top of the canopy - up as high as they can get," Wood said.

"Then of course you have aerosol cans, de-icer, bottles of oil - just the general stuff that you would have in a service station."

Wood said it was also fortunate that the building was pretty well constructed and contained the fire pretty well. The fire did not spread to nearby businesses like a car wash.

"It kind of acted as an oven and held all that in until it came out the windows," he said of the cinderblock building.