As a massive plume of black smoke permeated the sky above Fort Wayne Wednesday, the blaze reminded some of a historic fire that happened in southeast Fort Wayne nearly 27 years ago.
On Aug. 30, 1997, a fire broke out at an abandoned tire warehouse on Bowser Avenue in southeast Fort Wayne. The fire happened less than a mile from Wednesday’s fire at the intersection of Wayne Trace and New Haven Avenue.
The Bowser Avenue blaze started after a suspected arsonist set a building on fire that was housing at least 500,000 tires.
John McGauley, the court executive for Allen Superior Court who covered the fire in 1997 as a reporter for The News-Sentinel, remembered the site had been widely recognized as a hazard for years due to the amount of tires being stored and the dilapidated state of the building.