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Ronnie Travis stood a few feet away from the charred remains of his workshop and storage shed on Tuesday with a look of sadness in his eyes as he watched firefighters continue to hose it down. By 11 a.m. there wasn’t much left of the building Travis and his wife had built behind their home at 4392 Dry Pond Lane in Oxford six months earlier.
Travis had been working inside the shed welding a chipping machine when the breaker tripped. He went back to the house to flip the breaker switch and when he came back, his workshop was in flames. He called 911 and then grabbed a fire extinguisher from the house. “I went through two fire extinguishers and I didn’t knock a dent in it,” Travis said. The Oxford Fire Department had the fire out by about 10:47 a.m., less than 10 minutes after they received the emergency call, Oxford Deputy Fire Chief Bobby Hedrick said. The fire cost Travis more than his workshop though, it also claimed part of his hobby. Travis enjoys woodworking and he had just put together two tables on Monday that were destroyed in the fire. The biggest loss for him was more sentimental in value though. Four years ago, his wife gave him an old-fashioned metal sled for Christmas that he loved. “We liked to snow slide,” Travis said. “It’d never been outside.” He said he never saw any sparks or flames while he was working, but once the fire started, it spread quickly. Travis said the entire 20-foot by 30-foot building was engulfed within a couple minutes. Fueling the fire was a tank of gasoline, paint thinner and other flammables he kept in the workshop. Catawba County Fire Inspector Bill Bump believes the fire started about 10:30 a.m. when a spark from the blowtorch during welding ignited something on the floor. He said the fire appears to be an accident, but the structure is considered a total loss. Bump cautioned that if people are welding at home, they need to make sure the area is clear of combustibles and always have a fire extinguisher nearby. “A little more attentiveness may go a long way,” he said.
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