Electrical engineer to help determine cause of Free State Brewing Co. fire
2:05 p.m. Monday, October 6, 2008
Fire investigators have called in an electrical engineer Monday morning to help determine the cause of a fire at a Free State Brewing Co.’s eastern Lawrence facility.
“If we get into systems beyond our expertise, we bring in somebody,” said Rich Barr, a fire marshal with Lawrence Douglas County Fire & Medical.
Firefighters extinguished the blaze early Sunday on the western side of the brewing and bottling facility at 1927 Moodie Road — a major expansion project for the downtown Lawrence company.
Barr said it was common for the department to call in an engineer from a private company to help with an investigation and to help answer questions.
He said fire investigators expect to release more information, including a preliminary damage estimate, Monday afternoon.
Free State’s brewmaster Steve Bradt said Sunday the fire started on the west end of the building where refrigeration equipment was the only equipment running at the time of the fire.
“It’s a major source of fire back there on that west end,” Free State owner Chuck Magerl said Monday morning.
Free State for months has been overhauling the 12,000-square-foot facility to expand the company’s production capacity. The site, in the former A.B. Coker Building, had been renovated with everything from new floors to new plumbing and electrical work.
"We were really kind of expecting to get the system tested out this week and up and running by late this week or early next week. We were pretty close to seeing the end of a pretty long project, pretty excited about getting things going. Certainly this is going to set things back a little ways," Bradt said.
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