MT. MORRIS TWP. MI (WNEM) -
Fire crews from several local fire departments battled a huge fire at a local warehouse near Flint on Thursday evening.
Crews were called to 4054 Dolan Dr., just off Pierson Road and a short distance from I-75 around 6 p.m. The business located at that address is Charter Distributing, Floorsource Wholesale and Supply, a flooring company.
"A lot of chemicals, glue, things like that, a lot of flooring material, which increases the fire load and makes the job that much harder," said Mt. Morris Twp. Police Chief Scott McKenna.
Because of the chemicals used by the flooring company, fire crews called in a HAZMAT team to assess the hazardous runoff from the water mixing with chemicals. Authorities want to make certain that none of the glues used by the company mixed with water and streamed into area sewers. They also fought the blaze from the outside and didn't go inside because of the potential hazards.
"If you notice, they're doing everything from the aerials, they don't want to get close to it until they know what is in the building," said Chief McKenna.
So far there's no reports of any injuries. Responding firefighters said the whole building had been leveled by what was described as a "blast." For a while, Pierson Road was shut down between Jennings and I-75.
Several viewers called into the WNEM-TV5 newsroom reporting that they could see the smoke from the fire from as far away as Saginaw County. Crews said it's too early to tell what may have started the fire.
For a more detailed look at the blaze, click on the slideshow at the top of this page or watch the video clip above sent to us by Tim St. Cin of Flushing.
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