PHOTOS: A Fort Atkinson photographer captured history for his hometown during a warehouse fire earlier this month.
On August 10, Spencer Jelinek said he saw smoke from his balcony. Instead of running from the fire, he ran toward it.
“It was just a split reaction. ‘I need to go do this,’ and I did it,” he said. “I immediately thought the worst, and that’s why I grabbed the camera. I was like, ‘OK, well I can grab my camera and document this. If I need to help, I can help.” The landscape photographer said he had never captured a fire before that Tuesday. “Honestly, I was a little scared in certain aspects because there were explosions every now and then,” he said. A blaze had broken out at an industrial park in the 700 block of Oak Street. It sent a plume of black smoke high into the air.