Nearly 100 firefighters respond to East Austin fire
AUSTIN, Texas - Almost 100 firefighters responded to a large fire at an auto body shop in East Austin late Thursday night.
The fire resulted in multiple calls to the Austin Fire Department.
"We had one caller stating there were two blocks away on their porch and saw flames from that area," said Rachael Lewis, Operations PIO with AFD.
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Within five minutes, the fire was upgraded to a second alarm fire. That meant more units were needed in order to get the fire under control, because firefighters were not just fighting a fire. Lewis says it was much more dangerous than that.
"During this incident, we had multiple explosions within the auto body shop that was burning. It was an auto body shop, which leads us to believe there's lots of chemicals, lots of pressurized tanks and lots of vehicles which present significant hazards within a fire," she said.
Austin Fire posted a video of the explosion to X, formerly Twitter.
Lewis says 96 firefighters and 28 units responded. The fire was controlled in under an hour.
A firefighter was injured and treated by EMS. Lewis says the firefighter is expected to be okay.
The cause of the fire remains under investigation.