It's unknown what caused the blaze at James Auto Body, which took crews from four cities to battle. The two people hurt are expected to recover.
By CHRIS TISCH and JANETTE NEUWAHL
Published June 23, 2004
LARGO - Two firefighters were injured in a two-alarm blaze Tuesday evening that destroyed an auto body shop near U.S. 19 and East Bay Drive.
Employees inside James Auto Body, 2130 Pine Forest Drive, were working when they heard an explosion coming from the front of the building, then a series of bangs.
"It just kept exploding because there's thinner cans," said Duane Duckett, one of the employees.
The workers called 911 and pulled two cars out of the body shop before they had to retreat.
When fire crews received the 911 call about 6:20 p.m., the first firefighters pulling out of the station noticed a plume of black smoke and called for more units, said Tom Tarulli, deputy chief of the Largo Fire Department.
The first units arrived a few minutes later and found flames shooting through the roof. "It was already ripping," Tarulli said.
Still, firefighters searched the building for occupants, finding none. Inside the body shop, they hopped into a Mercedes and drove it out of the building, Tarulli said.
Two firefighters suffered heat exhaustion and were taken to Largo Medical Center. Those firefighters, two of the first to arrive, are expected to recover, Tarulli said.
No one else was injured.
Largo resident Mike Galloway was driving home from work on East Bay Drive on Tuesday night when he saw the raging fire.
"All I saw was a big ball of fire and a cloud of smoke," he said. "Then there were people running from all the stores toward the smoke."
About 35 firefighters from four cities - Largo, Pinellas Park, Clearwater and Seminole - battled the blaze.
Some fire crews attacked the fire by spraying water through doors and windows. Others helped lift three ladder booms above the burning building that is tucked behind a Publix grocery store.
Fire crews also had to contend with a line of mobile homes about 30 feet from the churning flames. Neighbors, who felt water from the hoses splash on their faces as they watched the fire, said it appeared only one home suffered some crinkling to its side from the heat.
Tarulli said the fire was brought under control about 8 p.m.
He said the blaze was difficult to battle because of all the flammable liquids inside the body shop. A normal house fire will burn as high as 1,400 degrees, but a fire fueled by that much chemical is likely to burn at close to 2,000 degrees, he said.
The tattered roof also didn't make it easy to get to all the hot spots inside.
"It's like putting a fire out inside an oven," Tarulli said. "Somehow you have to open the door and put out the fire."
He hoped firefighters were able to salvage some records in the office, but otherwise he figured the building was destroyed. A car also was destroyed, and two were damaged, Duckett said.
A damage estimate in dollars and a cause were not available Tuesday night. Tarulli expects it will take two days to comb through the wreckage.
Duckett said he thinks the fire started in the building's middle paint room, where paint thinner is kept. No employees were working in the room at the time of the explosion, he said.
"You don't get explosions like that from computers," he said. "But we were all far enough away that we weren't in any real danger. An explosion still kind of freaks you out, though."
- Times correspondent Eamonn Kneeshaw contributed to this report.
