Fla. Storage Tenants Angered by Fire
ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. --
A massive fire burned through an Orlando storage facility Monday, and some tenants are outraged over the blaze. They say the explosion started in a mechanics shop that shouldn't have been in the facility on Forsyth Road, to begin with.
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Fire investigators believe one of the tenants was working on a car inside a unit and when he used a cutting tool to remove the gas tank, it triggered the explosion.
Other tenants told WFTV there are lots of guys running businesses out of the small garages and they want Orange County code enforcement to put a stop to it.
Tenants who rented storage units at the Orlando Business Center salvaged what they could. But some of them lost it all, and they're pointing the finger at fellow renters.
"Most of them, they just do what they want, when they want, how they want. And they don't care about what the laws are," tenant Mark Hahn said.
Investigators said the fire that damaged more than two-dozen units, and the contents of those garages, was likely started by a renter who was running a mechanic's shop out of his.
"Half of them aren't licensed, they have no reclaim facilities, the fluids, the oils, anti-freeze, you see it on the ground, in the dumpsters, there's old tires, everything," Hahn said.
Mark Hahn had expected Orange County Code Enforcement to crack down on the problems after the first big fire there last August, but bad habits apparently haven't changed.
"Ive seen them dump five-gallon buckets of oil in a dumpster from doing oil changes. That's illegal," he said.
Fire officials say the investigation will be thorough and code violations will not go unpunished. But this isn't the only storage facility in town.
"We all know there are storage units throughout the county and within the cities, and it's very difficult to check every single one of them," said Chief Mark Rhame, Orange County Fire Rescue.
Code enforcement could end up issuing citations and maybe fines, though some of the tenants believe this should be treated like a crime rather than an accident.
It's up to the renter to carry insurance on the items they have in storage.
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