By Karen Kucher and Lyndsay Winkley
The San Diego Union-Tribune
SAN DIEGO — It took 75 firefighters and a fire helicopter about two hours to douse a blaze at a 10,000-square-foot warehouse in the Midway District Wednesday morning, a San Diego Fire-Rescue captain said.
The fire sparked at the Hancock Street facility near Sherman Street about 7:30 a.m., said San Diego Fire Capt. Joe Amador. When firefighters arrived, flames were already shooting from every entrance, the captain said. A thick, dark plume of smoke could be seen for miles.
It was too hot and too dangerous for crews to battle the fire from inside the single-story building, so firefighters, some who were standing atop 100-foot truck ladders, doused the flames from outside, Amador said. A number of nearby businesses were evacuated as a precaution.
“It was a really big warehouse and we couldn’t get inside,” he said. “That made it harder because there are a lot of hard to reach places in a burning building.”
Crews eventually got the fire under control and managed to keep it from spreading to any other structures in the tightly packed business district, Amador said. No one was injured.
A damage estimate wasn’t available, but the warehouse suffered extensive damage. At least five businesses, including an upholstery business and a packaging business, shared the space, Amador said.
San Diego police closed Hancock Street between Kurtz Street and Sherman Street to traffic while crews battled the blaze. Fire investigators were working to determine what caused the fire. A damage estimate wasn’t available.
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