Marquis Theatre catches fire

Author: Tamara Hilmes

Though she had grown up being told never to yell "fire!" in a movie theater, Dierdra Michelle found herself doing just that, or almost, when she was the first to notice the fire at the Marquis Theater on Main Street. Shortly after noon on Tuesday, Michelle, a sales clerk at Forth and Goal, was sitting out on the cement steps in front of the store eating her lunch when she noticed that smoke was escaping from the northern-most corner of the theater's roof.

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"I saw smoke coming out of the corner of the roof," said Michelle, "and I thought it was just the theater's heat running. Then I noticed that the corner was charred and I ran inside and said to my boss, 'Dan, I think there might be a fire over there.'"

After alerting her boss about the suspect smoke that was being emitted from the theater's roof, Michelle ran over to Ben Franklin to alert the store's employees of the situation.

"I ran over to Ben Franklin right away," continued Michelle, "and I said, 'You guys might wanna get out of here. Your roof is on fire!'"

"Dierdra ran over and told us that there was smoke coming out of our roof and that we should get out," said Deb Haverlick, an employee at Ben Franklin who was working at the time of the fire. "Really," she continued, "if it hadn't been for her, we wouldn't have known what was going on until much later."

According to Chief Rick Cole of the Middlebury Volunteer Fire Department, they received the call from Forth and Goal shortly after noon on Monday. After responding to the call with two fire trucks, an ambulance and a traffic blockade on Main St. by the Middlebury Police Department, Cole and his men went to work.

"There was smoke coming out of the roof," said Cole, "but the fire was all outside of the building. We evacuated the Ben Franklin, made a couple of guts in the roof and put out what fire was there."

According to Cole, no one was injured and very little damage was sustained by the theater, apart from the minor charring and gutting of the northern corner of the roof.

The cause of the fire is still under speculation, though there are indications that it might have been electrical.

"CVPS was over here checking things out," said Haverlick shortly after people from Central Vermont Public Service had left the premises.

"I'm assuming it was electrical," said Michelle, "And I'm not anyone, but it looked like it the way it was burning."

Mary Manley, like Michelle, was also working nearby, at the Henry Sheldon Museum at the time of the fire. Manley said she was first notified of the commotion occurring directly across the street by WCAX Channel 3 News. The station called to ask if she would take a photo of the action with her cellular phone and send it to them.

"It was around 12:20 or 12:25 p.m. when they called and I looked out the window," said Manley. "At that point, the firemen were hatchet-ing the roof open and I saw smoke and flames coming out. It all seemed to go away fairly quickly, though."

According to onlookers, the fire department was efficient in stabilizing the situation at the theater.

"The firemen did a fantastic job," said Alice Babbie, Assistant Manager of Ben Franklin. "The whole process only took an hour and a half, or an hour and forty-five minutes tops."

"They had two trucks and a ladder over there," said Manley, "and they had several men up on the roof taking care of it. It seemed pretty orderly."