Firefighters battled a fire at an indoor practice facility under construction at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.
The Daily Progress reports (http://bit.ly/TdYBip) that a worker using a torch likely started the fire, which sent black smoke hundreds of feet into the air.
Charlottesville Fire Chief Charles L. Werner said the fire seems to have started when a worker’s torch made contact with a rubber membrane used to seal the roof.
Battalion Chief Richard Jones of the Charlottesville Fire Department said firefighters were dispatched just after 12:30 p.m. on Monday. Firefighters extinguished the fire by 2:25 p.m., McCance said. Workers at the site called in the fire, and no one was injured, according to officials.
Every fire apparatus in Charlottesville converged on the scene, with firefighters using ladder trucks to spray the structure’s exposed roof.
A university spokesman told reporters that if the wind direction been different, flames could have ignited the entire length of the roof and caused the structure to collapse.
Read more about the incident at http://bit.ly/TdYBip.
