Now to where they needed a lot of water last night. A fire tears through a tire store in North Pekin. Krystina Russell shows us the damage done.

Even though the fire is out at Tommy House Tires in North Pekin, there are still many questions to be answered. The owners and fire officials are working together to assess the damage from Saturday night's blaze.
The Pekin location is one of six Tommy House Tires', in Central Illinois. One of the company's owners John House said,

"Well we were worried cause we store a lot of tires here. There is probably over one million dollars worth of inventory here."

Five area fire departments were dispatched to the location off Route 29 because of the intensity of burning tires. North Pekin's fire chief Chris McGill explained,

"With the fire load that we had inside, the unknown chemical or fuels on the inside we needed all the help we could get."
House also added, "Once tires start on fire it's hard to put them out."

It took about 35 fire fighters two hours to put out the blaze, and it also took a special tactic to bring down the flames.

"Since there aren't any windows and no roof ventilation, the safest way to get some of heat and the smoke out of the building was to cut holes on the side of it" Mcgill added.

Most of the damage from the fire was contained on the west side of the building, where commercial tires are examined and then shipped to other Tommy House Tire locations.

"Looks like we might have lost half of the building. And we are going to do everything we can to get it rebuilt and put it back into place," House described."

Since the retail area and repair shop were spared, House still plans to open Monday.

"They are still going to have flats. They are still going to need their tires changed and we are going to do everything we can do to keep them up and rolling."

John House feels fortunate that no one was inside the building at the time of the fire. But now with a burned out building, House plans to stay put.

"We are going to stay at this site and gonna try to work around what we have to work around."

The Illinois Fire Marshall is still investigating and no cause has been determined yet.