Historic South-Central, Los Angeles, CA: Firefighters battled a blaze early Wednesday morning in a commercial building that housed a textile business which expanded into a greater alarm structure fire when additional resources were requested.

The Los Angeles City Fire Department responded to a reported fire in an approximately 100′ x 200′ commercial building just after 1:30 a.m., Mar. 22, on the 3000 block of South Main Street in the Historic South-Central neighborhood in the city of Los Angeles.

When firefighters arrived on scene, smoke was showing from the building. Crews immediately went into offensive mode with an interior fire attack approximately 100 feet deep inside the structure, according to LAFD.

LAFD reported that fire crews worked to locate the fire to possibly the mezzanine area of the interior. However, due to the amount of fire and difficulty accessing the area which would pose a greater risk to fighters battling a blaze above them, the incident commander directed a transition to a defensive operation which brought firefighters out from the interior to battle the flames from the outside of the building.

Firefighters initially on the rooftop, had cut at least two ventilation holes with heavy flames coming from the holes, according to LAFD. All firefighters exited the building and came off the rooftop to deploy master streams of water to douse the flames.

Captain Cody Weireter, Public Information Officer with the Los Angeles City Fire Department interviewed by Key News Network at the scene, reported a total of 106 firefighters responded to the incident. It took about one hour and 15 minutes to knock down the blaze.

A partial roof of the building collapsed after around 30 minutes into the firefight, with almost a full roof collapse, reported Weireter.

Weireter said the building housed a textile business with a very heavy fire load. Firefighters were able to confine the fire to the actual fire building, minimizing damage to one of the exposures to the north side of the building.

LAFD Arson and Counter Terrorism investigators responded to the scene to determine the circumstances surrounding the fire. It’s protocol to have that response because of the size of the fire and amount of loss to rule out any suspicious activity, explained Weireter. “But at this point, nothing is pointed in that direction.”

No firefighter injuries were reported, or to civilians at the scene, according to Weireter.

Weireter said crews with heavy equipment would be out throughout the next few hours to possibly around noon Wednesday, to make sure the fire is thoroughly extinguished due to the heavy load of materials and how deep seated the fire was inside the building.

Zak Holman, Video Journalist / KNN

© 2023 Key News Network