Four businesses were destroyed in a blaze that reduced much of a strip mall to rubble early Tuesday, firefighters said.
Flames had engulfed the roof of the shopping center in the 2200 block of East 61st Street when most firefighters arrived shortly after 2 a.m., witnesses said.
After an hourlong battle, only the Southern Hills Sports Bar and Omega Laundry, the anchoring tenants on either end of the strip mall, were largely saved, firefighters said.
Four of about 10 businesses between them -- including the Submariner Sandwich Shop, Bookland and Tulsa Nails -- were a wreckage of crumbled walls and twisted metal roof.
The rest had largely intact storefronts but substantial interior damage, firefighters said.
"It was like this when we got here," Omega Laundry owner Yer Vue said as she and her husband watched firefighters crawl through the neighboring businesses later in the morning.
The strip mall had been renovated recently after sustaining storm damage, she said.
Fire Capt. Chris Whittington said someone called authorities at 2:06 a.m. to report the fire as a blown transformer. Only one fire engine was dispatched, which is the standard response for such calls, he said.
The first firefighters to arrive called for backup when they saw heavy smoke rising along the length of the building, but additional crews were hampered by difficult access to fire hydrants, he said.
The two nearest hydrants are about 1,000 feet away, and crews had to close nearby Lewis Avenue as they draped a hose across the road to a hydrant at a QuikTrip store, Whittington said.
"It already had a pretty good start on us when we showed up," he said. "Then it took a while to get the water here. We had to lay a lot of hose."
Firefighters largely battled the flames defensively, spraying water from ladders at the two ends of the strip mall, Whittington said.
At one point, the fire either jumped over a firewall inside the building or created enough heat for a business on the other side of the wall to catch fire, he said.
But one firewall likely saved Omega Laundry, firefighters said.
Vue said she and her husband rushed to the scene after a security alarm was set off, only to find firefighters already cleaning up.
She said she had "no clue" what she and her husband would do with their business now. They have owned it for about two years, she said.
"We'll just see what happens," she said.
The cause of the fire was under investigation Tuesday.
Copyright 2012 - Tulsa World, Okla.
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
