Fire Rescue News - Unoccupied warehouse fire in Egg Harbor City ruled 'suspicious'
EGG HARBOR CITY - Police are investigating a suspicious fire that destroyed a 120-year-old vacant warehouse on the White Horse Pike Tuesday afternoon, causing traffic detours and wafting clouds of smoke into the city's downtown.
The blaze started at about 1 p.m. and could be seen for miles. At least five fire....Continue Reading
departments, local police and emergency response crews responded. Police said no one was injured, and by 4 p.m. the fire was mostly extinguished.
The building, directly across the highway from an abandoned supermarket and adjacent to New York Avenue, had been built in 1890, according to the city's tax records. The current owner, SLS Partnership, bought the building in 1980.
The warehouse formerly housed the manufacturing company Better Built Doors, city officials said, and had been used for other industrial purposes in the past. It is surrounded by other vacant structures, which crews fought to protect from also catching fire.
Egg Harbor City Police Chief John McColgan said there was no electricity running to the building. Health inspectors are also investigating why large drums of dish detergent were being stored inside the structure.
Police directed traffic off Route 30 and onto back roads north of the fire for hours until it was under control. Rows of ambulances, fire trucks and emergency vehicles lined the property and the nearby streets, as did the cars of locals who came to watch.
Firefighters from Cologne, Egg Harbor City and South Egg Harbor, as well as medical personnel from Galloway Township and Absecon visited the scene.
Bill Ellis was one of the several people watching two ladder trucks spew water on top of the building in the afternoon.
"I could see it from my house," said the resident of Ocean Heights Avenue in Egg Harbor Township, which is roughly 15 miles southeast of the site.
People living nearby the buildings called 911 when they saw smoke coming through the roof, police said, shortly before 1 p.m.
Locals watching outside theorized that homeless people living inside the building might have taken shelter there and started a fire to stay warm, but McColgan said his department had received no complaints of homeless people there and found no immediate evidence of anyone living inside.
Inspectors plan to sift through the burned-out building Wednesday, trying to find a cause for the fire. The structure will also have to be demolished, McColgan said.
Staff writer Caitlin Dineen contributed to this report.
Contact Lee Procida: 609-457-8707 LProcida@pressofac.com
We will post more information as it becomes available.
