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Friday afternoon, Cornelius Firefighters were dispatched to a residential fire in the 1200 block of N Barlow Street. But firefighters were already aware of the fire before being alerted by dispatchers, this is because the fire station is located directly across from the incident location.
A student volunteer noticed the smoke from the training room and alerted their captain, by the time the captain looked out the window they saw flames and smoke from the house. As they were making their way to the fire engine, the alerting tones were going off at the same time.
The crew arrived seconds later to find heavy fire coming from the rear porch of the house. They made a quick attack on the flames, but the fire had already spread into the interior of the house. A second arriving crew from Hillsboro attacked the flames that had reached the interior.