THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, September 30, 1994 TAG: 9409300534
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY STEVE STONE, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Short : 45 lines
A blaze that was first thought to be a car fire turned into a two-alarm inferno that heavily damaged a furniture warehouse Thursday and required 75 firefighters to put it out.
About half the warehouse on Naval Base Road near Wards Corner was gutted and its roof collapsed. The contents in the rest of the building were extensively damaged.
Late Thursday, city building code administrator Sherman Edmondson declared the building a hazard and ordered it torn down.
No one was injured, although an undisclosed number of employees were in the building when the fire broke out. The cause of the fire was unknown Thursday night.
Troy Lapetina, coordinator of emergency services for Norfolk, said the warehouse and its contents are owned by Eagle Ridge Inc. of Singapore. The company ships furniture products to the warehouse, where they are assembled.
The first fire call came at 4:37 p.m. Initially, dispatchers were told there was a car fire on Interstate 64, which runs parallel to Naval Base Road near Little Creek Road.
By 5:03 p.m., a second alarm was called. Eventually, 14 pieces of fire equipment, including five engine companies and two ladder trucks, were at the scene.
At the height of the blaze, flames broke through the roof and spread to two truck trailers parked alongside the building, which Lapetina estimated was 300 feet by 100 feet.
Although there were paints and other supplies in the building, Lapetina said a hazardous-materials team found no evidence of dangerous contaminants in water runoff from the fire. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by BILL TIERNAN, Staff
Norfolk firefighters, responding to a two-alarm fire, chop their way
into a warehouse on Naval Base Road on Thursday afternoon.
KEYWORDS: FIRE by CNB