DATE: Tuesday, March 18, 1997               TAG: 9703180348

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B2   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Brief 

DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH                    LENGTH:   25 lines

FIRE ``EMERGENCY'' TURNS OUT TO BE JUST MAINTENANCE

Fire department officials responding to a report of a tower fire in the city's Ocean Lakes section were surprised Monday night to discover that it was just sanitation workers letting off some hot air.

Workers at the Hampton Roads Sanitation District's plant, near the Navy's Fleet Combat Training Center at Dam Neck, were burning off excess gas that had built up in the system, according to Gene Snow, a communications supervisor for the police and fire departments.

``It was controlled,'' Snow said. ``It wasn't an accident. They just did it on purpose.''

Four fire trucks were dispatched to the plant, and they made quite a display screaming along Dam Neck Road. Only one of them actually arrived on the scene before the other trucks' drivers were told to return to their stations.

``We didn't know what it was,'' Snow said, ``so we sent quite a few.''

Send Suggestions or Comments to webmaster@scholar.lib.vt.edu