By late morning on Monday, the massive warehouse fire had been contained, but still billowing steam as firefighters on a crane dealt with hot-spots.
It’s nothing like the 100 fire personnel that were there just to stop the first from spreading this morning around 5 a.m. As of Monday late morning, the American Red Cross, American Mobile Response, ATF, city fire department and police were on scene with fire investigators.
Evansville Fire Department Division Chief Mike Larson said it will take days to fully put this fire out.
“And I would say you're gonna see smoke coming off this for probably another two or three days. Just because as far as getting into the center of it to get to every one of those single hotspots, you're gonna see smoke here for quite a while.”
Indeed, small fires could still be seen as one firefighter douses the waste below.
As the fire is suppressed, roads will be reopened around the intersection of Illinois Street and Morton Avenue.
Larson said the cause is still unknown, and due to the size of the structure it will be extremely difficult to discover.
At the peak of the battle against this fire there were about 100 fire personnel working not to put this fire out, but to stop it from consuming buildings around it.
“Almost immediately, we went to what we call a ‘defensive fire tactic,’ which is we surround the building that's involved itself, and we try and contain that fire to the structure that is on fire, and try and stop it from spreading to other nearby adjacent buildings.”
Larson said they almost succeeded.
“We did have at least one exposure to the South that I know for sure, that did burn, we were able to stop it from other multiple buildings on the south side.”
Larson says there is a concern that the wind could stoke the small fires that pop up in the debris.
He says fire crews will be tamping down flair-ups for a couple days and billowing steam will be visible during this time.
