And you have the obligatory question from the press. How did it start?
I believe I read somewhere that they did have water supply issues.
what I noticed was the semi's in the loading dock bays on fire as well. There is usually a considerable distance between the merchandise area where the stock is held and the actual trucks. Just my two cents worth. I guess this is why you should pre-fire plan. I drive near one in central Illinois and that facility is enormous. It is located in mostly farm land, a fire there would overwhelm the small departments in the area.
That's a problem with a lot of these massive warehouses, they are located in fairly rural areas so their fire departments do not have the resources required to find a major fire in 1 of them. I could also be 1 of the reasons we don't see the huge number of aerial devices fighting the fire that we would expect to see in many urban areas. Between the lack of water which seems like it occurred and lesser trained fire departments with fewer resources means a great deal of difficulty containing this type of fire.
Some of the videos do show and you can hear explosions with fireballs going 200 to 300' into the sky
Second floor how about a dining/eating area in addition to office spaces. Thousand people were working, they have to go someplace for their meals.
Because the fire dept shut it down! It showed through the roof about five minutes later!
I'm sure why you would turn off the risers since they were probably using them as a source of water for their hose lines so far into the building. If anything it seems like you turn off the suppression system and leave the risers charged. Also, when you listen to the audio provided above they did shut down the fire pump(s) so even if they left the suppression system on it probably didn't have sufficient water to be effective.
