Fire Destroys Several Units At Gloucester City Storage Facility
GLOUCESTER CITY, N.J. (CBS) – Fire officials in Camden County are investigating the cause of a blaze that tore through a storage facility late Sunday evening.
According to eyewitnesses, two people have been living inside one of the units due to tough economic times.
The fire started at about 9:30 p.m. inside a unit at the Gloucester City Self-Storage facility on Market Street in Gloucester City, New Jersey.
The unit where the fire reportedly started has been a point of contention for several weeks, according to customers.
"My uncle and my brother have a storage facility in here and my uncle has been complaining that he has seen people living in the facility, two guys," eyewitness Tina Vessella said.
Vessella says financial reasons forced one of the men to live inside the storage unit.
"The one guy's story to my uncle was he got evicted from his place and wife and kids left and he had nowhere to go. So it was cheaper to rent a storage facility and have somewhere to sleep at night," Vessella explained.
The owner of the storage facility told Eyewitness News that based on the damage that he has been able to assess so far, it does not initially appear that anyone was living inside the storage unit. However, he did say he has seen people living in the units in the past.
Some customers told Eyewitness News they lost everything in the fire.
"My whole life is in there … I don't know what I am going to do for Christmas," customer Nicole Beckett said.
Beckett just moved to New Jersey from Oklahoma and said everything she owned was destroyed in the fire.
Fire officials are labeling the blaze as suspicious. The exact cause of the fire remains under investigation.
