Neighborhood playground in Surprise burns to ground
Parents and their children stood around a circle of charred remains Monday, one day after a fire consumed a Surprise neighborhood's playground. Juli Pelham stared at a melted green slide where her 4-year-old son, Jacob, used to play. Only a small portion of the slide's end was left and long drips of plastic hung down from it. The top portion of a swing set, Jacob's favorite to play on, had rolled over onto the ground. A gnarled mass of metal was all that was left.
The playground fire, near 175th Avenue and Paradise Lane, sent huge plumes of black smoke over housetops while it burned.
"You couldn't breathe," Pelham said, remembering the smoke from the day before. "(Smoke) was all over the place. And the smell was 1,000 times worse than it is right now."
The smell of burnt plastic and rubber still hung in the air.
"Obviously, these things don't just catch on fire by themselves," said Kevin Spirlong, a Fire Department spokesman.
The playground was made of petroleum-based plastic, he said, adding that while it burns very quickly, it requires high heat to get started.
The facility was owned by the neighborhood HOA. No damage estimate or information on any plan to rebuild were immediately available.
The playground caught fire around 5:30 p.m. Sunday. Ben Chancey, 32, whose son used the playground, pulled into his driveway across the street as the flames were building. He got out of his car and could see flames spreading from under the slide.
"It spread so fast," Chancey said. "It was just out of control."
The playground quickly erupted into flames and neighbors stood on their porches and walked onto the grassy field near the playground to watch. Chancey felt the heat as he stood across the street.
Firefighters arrived 15 minutes later and put out the flames, but little was left.
"That was a place where a lot of kids went to play," Chancey said. "You have neighbors meeting new neighbors - it brings the community together."
Chancey said he has put out fires started in trash cans near the park before.
Mark Berlando, whose children also used the playground, thought immediately about his kids when he saw the fire and smoke.
"I mean, people are like, 'Oh my God, what if my kid was playing here (while it burned),' " Berlando said.
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