The fire in southwest Baltimore was so large Tuesday that its flames reached almost 50 feet in the air, fire officials said.
“You could see plumes of smoke across the city skyline,” said Baltimore City Fire Department spokesman Chief Kevin Cartwright. “It didn?t matter what part of the city you were responding from, you could see them. There was heavy, heavy fire and smoke.”
Nearly 120 city firefighters responded to the blaze in an apparently abandoned warehouse in the 2100 block of Wicomico Street at about 12:30 p.m., just as three floors and 80 percent of the building started to collapse, the fire department said.
Fire officials told their responders to stay out of the building, fearing injury.
“We wouldn?t risk our firefighters by sending them into a building like that,” Cartwright said.
The blaze was under control by mid-afternoon.
Two firefighters were transported to an area hospital for heat exhaustion on the 90-degree day, but there were no “serious injuries” caused by the fire, Cartwright said.
“There was no report of anyone being inside the warehouse,” he said. “We believe that it was actually a vacant warehouse.”
The cause of the blaze is still under investigation.
