Friday, March 29, 2024

Harper Ford Sets Up Temporary Location After Destructive Fire

Editor’s note: The staff of Harper Ford is currently set up at the Jackson Hewitt building in the industrial park at 45 Commercial Drive, Suite B in Vienna. They are at the east end of the building.  Harper Ford may be reached at their regular phone number, 618-658-9135.

The City of Vienna is reeling from a fire at one of the town’s landmark businesses. Bob Harper Ford, which has stood at the intersection of Illinois Route 146 and 45 for 38 years, was completely destroyed by the blaze on January 8th.

According to Vienna Fire Chief Brent Williams, Vienna Fire Department was alerted to a fire at a commercial structure at approximately 7:38 p.m.

Upon arrival, firefighters experienced heavy smoke and fire throughout the structure.

There were a total of 21 Fire apparatus from 10 Fire Departments with over 70 Firefighters on scene.

Mutual aid was provided from 9 additional fire departments including Buncombe Fire, Cypress Fire, Goreville Fire, New Burnside Fire, Pope County Fire Protection Dist., Lake of Egypt Fire Protection, Massac County Fire Protection, Carrier Mills Fire, and Stonefort Fire Department. Williams also extended a special thank you to Endrizzi Contracting for providing a trackhoe to help clear debris from the building collapse.

Crews were on scene until 2:16 a.m.

There were no injuries, though the structure was completely destroyed. Ten vehicles were also damaged in the fire.

Bob Harper Ford purchased the Ford dealership in Vienna in 1983. The photos below were captured by Lonnie Hinton.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

2 comments

  1. Why wasnt this in the yesterday’s paper? Ever sense the goreville is that turn to the Goreville news and I started charging $0.50 for it ain’t been worth the $0.50 that I pay every Wednesday if it wasn’t for going into town and seeing what was going on I probably wouldn’t even bother to pay for it considering that this big loss was not in the paper when it should have been I may quit buying it anyway…. the Goreville paper and Vienna times are still the same thing aren’t they pretty well ran off the same office????

    • We are not affiliated with the “Goreville News”. The Goreville Gazette and The Vienna Times merged last summer. We have one newspaper that covers all of Johnson County.