Crews tackled a three-alarm blaze that destroyed a California Salvation Army furniture warehouse and spread to a neighboring field Tuesday.
The Salvation Army & Family Store in Perris caught fire at around 3:30 p.m., and workers were able to escape the building, KCBS-TV reports. Although the warehouse was considered a total loss, the shelter next door that housed Salvation Army workers recovering from addiction survived the fire.
“We heard an explosion next door, and I came down and, right away, evacuated everyone in the building,” Julian Garcia, an assistant resident manager at the warehouse, told KCBS.
Wooden furniture inside the warehouse fueled the fire's intensity, and flames eventually spread to an acre field nearby. Smoke from the secondary blaze caused traffic delays on Interstate 215.
Roughly 130 CAL FIRE/Riverside County firefighters and at least 10 pieces of apparatus responded to the blaze, KABC-TV reports. Crews worked for more than five hours to contain the flames, and both blazes were under control by about 9 p.m.
No injuries were reported in the incident, and the cause of the fire is under investigation.
