Detroit Mattress Store Goes Up In Flames [VIDEO]
DETROIT (WWJ) - For nearly three hours, firefighters battled a huge two-alarm fire at a store near the Detroit-Warren border.
The fire broke out Friday morning at Mattress Wholesale, along 8 Mile Road, just east of Ryan Road.
"I am counting now 14 firetrucks, fire crews now on the scene starting to dump some water on this thing. It went up so quick, as you can imagine," WWJ's Bill Szumanski reported at 7:30 a.m. from above the scene in Chopper 950. "The sign out front says mattresses, area rugs, et cetera, all that stuff is going to burn, and burn very quickly."
Eastbound 8 Mile Road was shut down after Ryan Road and multiple homes behind the store were evacuated as a safety precaution.
"In the back, we had some families that were evacuated because we didn't know if the fire was going to spread to their house," Deputy Fire Commissioner David Fornell told WWJ's Laura Bonnell. "But we successfully stopped the fire there. They're being sheltered right now and they'll be able to go back here in a little while."
Fornell said it would be "a long time" before fire investigators would be able to go into the building to start determining a cause of the blaze.
"It's too dangerous," he said. "We're keeping people back from the walls...our firefighters, safety is of the utmost for them."
No one was injured, but authorities said the building was "completely gutted" — likely a total loss.
