St. Louis firefighters were battling a massive five-alarm warehouse fire for hours on Wednesday, and a fire apparatus at the scene was crushed by falling debris when part of the structure collapsed.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that the fire broke out shortly after 10 a.m. in the basement of a warehouse near 39th Street and Park Ave. in the city's Botanical Heights neighborhood, and firefighters found it difficult to locate the source of the blaze and contain it amid heavy smoke.
A large concern was raised because of what firefighters eventually learned was housed inside the warehouse -- over 150,000 citronella candles, which played a large part in increasing the fire's intensity.
Crews were eventually ordered out of the building by radio call and with a loud horn blast, and a short time later a section of wall on the south side of the warehouse collapsed, falling onto a parked apparatus and crushing most of the cab.
"Very intense fire, burning for a long time," St. Louis Fire Capt. Garon Mosby told the Post-Dispatch. "Any structure is going to be weakened. Collapse was more or less imminent, and it happened sooner rather than later."
Mosby, who said several firefighters were hurt but that none of the injuries were life-threatening, believed the building had a sprinkler system but perhaps not in the basement where the fire originated.
