Sign fire prompts evacuation of Gateway Mall

SPRINGFIELD — An apparent electrical fire caused by sparks from faulty signage on Saturday night at the Gateway Mall resulted in the mall’s evacuation as more than 100 onlookers, many of whom had been inside the mall’s food court or movie theaters, watched from the parking lot on the east side of the building.

“The ‘movie lady’ walked in and said, ‘Stay calm, but there’s a fire. We need everyone to leave,” said Rebecca Rupnow, 18, a University of Oregon freshman from Sacramento, Calif., who was standing in the parking lot with a friend as they finished their bucket of popcorn and large sodas outside.

Rupnow and Elliot Harris, 18, of Sacramento, had watched previews inside a theater at Movies 12 when the first images of “Mirror Mirror” began to roll just after 7:30 p.m. That’s when a theater employee told movie-goers they needed to leave, Rupnow said.

Although a mall employee said a mall security officer thought he saw lightning hit the corner of the building by the “Gateway” sign on the outside of the building, above where mall visitors enter its food-court area, District Fire Chief Bruce Hocking of the Eugene Fire Department said it appeared to be an electrical fire caused by a problem with the signage.

The ‘A’ and the ‘Y’ on the sign were out while the other five letters were still lit about 7:50 p.m., but soon all the lights in the letters were turned off.

Firefighters were on top of the building, peeling back bent and melted metal.

As many as five fire trucks could be seen at the site, in addition to a paramedic unit from Springfield Fire & Life Safety, and 24 personnel were there, Hocking said. That many responders were called for such a small fire because the mall is a busy place with a lot of folks inside on a Saturday night, Hocking said, posing the potential for a significant threat to life.

“Because we don’t know what we have when we see flame and smoke coming from the roof,” he said.

Ted Warren, an Associated Press photographer from Seattle who was in Eugene over the weekend to shoot Saturday’s Prefontaine Classic at Hayward Field, was driving by the mall about 7:40 p.m. on his way back to the Courtyard by Marriott on Hutton Street, when he saw “flames coming out of the corner of the building” by the Gateway sign.

“That’s really weird,” Warren said as he shot photos of the scene. “It’s got to be electrical.”

Two mall security officers spent most of their time trying to convince media, and bystanders with smart phones, that they were not allowed to shoot photographs or record any video at the scene.

As for the theory that lighting had hit the building, Hocking chuckled at that.

“I’m not in charge of lightning, so I can’t respond to that,” he said.

No damage estimate or mall closure information was available Saturday night.