Virginia Office Tower Catches Fire, No Injuries

April 10--NORFOLK -- A fire atop Fort Norfolk Plaza, a medical office tower off Brambleton Avenue, required the aid of more than a dozen emergency vehicles Monday evening.

It appeared that no one was injured. The fire on the roof at 301 Riverview Ave. started about 6:30 p.m., Norfolk Fire-Rescue spokesman Harry Worley said. Crowds watched as smoke poured into the sky, and flames could be seen from the roof of the building, close to the Sentara campus.

On the ninth floor -- the top floor -- Joel Deloatche heard a series of loud pops and knew something was wrong.

Deloatche and his fellow employees for Red Coats Inc., a janitorial service, couldn't use the nearest stairs because they were blocked by thick smoke. So they ran to the other side of the building and down the nine flights.

That took about 10 minutes total, Deloatche said.

"I wasn't really nervous," said Deloatche, who has been on his job only a week. "I was just thinking about other people. I'm just thankful everyone got out OK."

Donna Brock has also been on her job, at a sleep disorder clinic on the sixth floor, for a week.

She said that because she was new, she didn't know how serious things were when she heard the alarms telling everyone to evacuate. But when she saw the heavy smoke racing through the stairs, she knew.

"It was pretty scary," Brock said. "On a scale of one to 10, it was a 10."

The fire was brought under control about 8 p.m., Worley said. He said it mostly had been contained to the roof, though he wasn't sure the extent of water damage inside the building.

Fort Norfolk Plaza opened in 2009 and is home primarily to medical offices. Worley wasn't sure how many people were inside at the time of the fire, but he said the building was about 75 percent occupied.

A cause was unknown Monday night.

Bernice Perry-Jones was with Deloatche on the ninth floor. As the sun set, she wasn't sure how she was getting home, because her keys were in the building.

Safely out of the building, though, she managed to maintain a sense of humor.

"I was just trying to get out of there," she said. "I thought I was going to be a rotisserie chicken."

Mike Connors, 757-446-2536, [email protected]

Copyright 2012 - The Virginian-Pilot, Norfolk, Va.