A major emergency fire burned through the roof of a commercial building housing a clothing business in downtown Los Angeles Friday, sending up a large plume of smoke that could be seen for miles as firefighters worked to extinguish the flames and prevent them from spreading to other structures.
The fire was reported about 5:10 a.m. in the single-story building in the 1400 block of South Main Street, said Nicholas Prange of the Los Angeles Fire Department.
“A heavy fire load — reported as clothing/textiles — and a mezzanine inside have contributed to the fire behavior,” Prange said in a statement.
“The building has sustained a partial roof collapse,” Prange said. “Firefighters have established positions on adjacent buildings on either side using hand lines to keep the flames at bay, but due to the condition of the building, this will be an extended operation.
“Crews are prioritizing the neighboring buildings, and will need to bring in LAFD Heavy Equipment crews to finalize extinguishment later this morning,” Prange said. “So far, there have been no reported injuries.”
The building houses a business that manufactures and distributes T-shirts, according to Fox 11.
“We have approximately 120 firefighters on scene,” LAFD PIO David Ortiz told the station as the firefighting effort was continuing. “They tried to do an aggressive interior attack initially, but due to the amount of material inside, we went to a defensive posture. We backed off a couple of times but obviously, there’s still a lot of material on the inside.”
Ortiz said firefighters prevented the fire from spreading to neighboring buildings.
Traffic was routed away from the scene, and motorists were advised to avoid the area.