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The Tullahoma Fire Department, along with multiple agencies from surrounding areas, responded to a blaze at Life Care Center late Friday evening.

According to Tullahoma City Fire Marshal Nick Kimbro, at approximately 9:14 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 20, the Coffee County Communications Center dispatched the Tullahoma Fire Department to Life Care Center at 1715 N. Jackson St. for a reported fire on the facility’s roof and a smoke smell in the building.

Less than a minute after dispatch, the first set of fire crews arrived on the scene and reported a visible fire on the roof involving a roof top HVAC Unit (RTU).

“Per protocol and pre-incident planning, facility staff was actively evacuating patients and personnel with the assistance of fire, police, and EMS personnel,” Kimbro said. “Additional TFD personnel and equipment arrived on the scene, established Incident Command, quickly ascended to the roof, and initiated a fire attack.”

Due to the nature of the event and the type of facility, mutual aid was requested from surrounding municipalities. The Coffee County Emergency Medical Agency and Coffee County EMS started disaster plan protocols, like establishing a temporary triage across the street from Life Care Center, and asking EMS units from surrounding agencies for potential patient relocation.

According to Kimbro, suppression crews radioed to command that the fire had been brought under control by 9:30 p.m. He added overhaul operations found hotspots in the roof decking under the RTU that were uncovered and extinguished those spots. Unaffected wings of the building were systematically cleared of smoke with positive pressure fans and checked for air quality with air/gas monitors.

As the areas were being cleared and verifiying the air quality, both patients and staff were placed back in the facility.

“To our knowledge, no patients were required to be transferred to other facilities,” Kimbro said. “An aggressive fire attack on the roof in correlation with the fire suppression system working as designed in the building contained the fire to the area of origin.”

Kimbro said the Tullahoma Fire Department extends its most sincere gratitude to all responding agencies and personnel involved in the incident and the unified command staff that allowed it to be brought under control quickly and without any reported injuries. The other agencies that assisted the Tullahoma Fire Department included the Manchester Fire Department, Hickerson Station Volunteer Fire Department, Arnold Air Force Base Fire Department, Coffee County EMA, Moore County EMA, Coffee County EMS, Moore County EMS, Bedford County EMS, Lincoln Medical Center EMS, Grundy County EMS, Warren County EMS, A & E Ambulance, AmeriMed Ambulance and Vanderbilt LifeFlight.