TAMPA – Investigators were trying to determine the origin of a fire that ripped through a storage facility in Town ‘N Country early Monday morning, causing $800,000 in damage to 150 units in a two-alarm blaze that drew firefighters from Hillsborough County and Tampa.No one was injured, but damage caused by flames, smoke and water in the 19,350-square-foot building was extensive.
Twenty-two firefighting units from Hillsborough Fire Rescue and Tampa Fire Rescue responded to the 6:30 a.m. alarm in Building E at Public Storage, 8421 W. Hillsborough Ave.
Nacole Ravette, spokeswoman for Hillsborough Fire Rescue, said several residents of Town & Country Apartments, a complex behind the storage facility on Webb Road, smelled smoke and alerted firefighters.
It was slow going, she said, because firefighters first had to extinguish fires in units with doors on the outside, then peel the roof off to get at units along an interior corridor with inside-only access. Each unit had to be inspected to ensure the fire had not spread, she said.
We fought the fire on the outside, she said, to gain access to the inside.
Fire damage was limited to Building E, she said.
Responding firefighters found several storage units burning, Revette said. Black and gray smoke billowed out, slowing traffic during morning rush hour on Hillsborough Avenue.
By late Monday morning, the fire was under control and crews were taking the roof up unit by unit to allow the heat
to dissipate and keep remaining flames under control.We’ve stopped it, Revette said shortly before noon.
Tampa Fire Rescue crews, which had responded in mutual aid, had left and replacement firefighters from the county were coming in to spell crews that had been there from the beginning, she said.
Storage facilities present unique problems for firefighters, she said, because the contents of the units are unknown and could pose life-threatening dangers. There could be combustibles in the units or hazardous and explosive materials.
Some of the units in Monday morning’s fire did contain paint cans, she said, and others housed combustible materials such as clothes and paper.
It was too early for investigators to determine a cause, she said.
It’s slow going, she said. It’s going to be a long process.
The blaze was the most recent in a number of storage facility fires over the past year – some minor, some that caused hundreds of thousands of dollars damage.
In September, an early morning fire damaged a facility on North 50th Street in the Del Rio area of East Tampa. That two-alarm blaze damaged property stored in several units.
In May, county fire investigators worked a blaze that damaged about 50 of 127 units of Extra Space Storage on State Road 60 in Valrico.
Firefighters found that battle difficult. Ladder trucks dumped water through the roofs of buildings as crews broke into several individual units. They had to pull out all the stored property to make sure the fire had not spread into those units. Some of the units were stacked floor to ceiling with boxes of stored items.
In February 2015, authorities arrested a Holiday man and charged him with sparking a fire that caused $200,000 damage to about 100 units in the Extra Space Storage facility in Holiday.
Pasco County firefighters said 40 individual storage units and contents were destroyed in that fire.
kmorelli@tampatrib.com
(813) 259-7760
Massive fire at Tampa storage unit facility, up to 30 units fully engulfed, ABC Action News
At least 150 units damaged in storage fire, ABC Action News
Fire at Tampa storage facility, WFLA
Crews fighting fire at Tampa storage facility, WFLA
