LOS ANGELES (KTLA) -About 250 firefighters battled multiple fires early Monday morning that closed part of the 110 Freeway, damaged at three high rise buildings in downtown Los Angeles and one apartment in Westlake, according to Los Angeles Fire Department officials.
Firefighters first responded to reports of a blaze at 906 N. Fremont St. around 1:20 a.m., LAFD Chief Ralph M. Terrazas said.
About two-thirds of a seven-story apartment complex that was under construction was on fire, Terrazas said.
The building covered about 1.3-million square feet of area space, and the fire caused significant exposure to two adjacent buildings.
Fire station three was directly across the street from the burning building, LAFD Capt. Jaime Moore said.
“When they open the doors they saw nothing but fire blowing down the streets, so they started putting their hose lines literally from the front entrance of the fire stations, right across the street to the fire,” Moore said.
A 16-story high rise at 221 N. Figueroa St. had active fire on three floors and sprinklers had been activated on six floors when firefighters responded.
“Our firefighters were able to get in there, knock down this fire, contain it,” Moore said. “We do have 14 of those 16 floors with some significant form of damage, either through smoke, radiant heat or water damage.”
A 15-story L.A. County facility at 313 N. Figueroa St. also had fire exposure to three floors, but there was no active fire.
“Firefighters got in there, luckily, in enough time to cool those areas down. They had some papers, some files, on the desks that started burning. but they were able to knock it down and keep that fire from taking off,” Moore said.
Due to the size of the fire and the logistics of fighting it, crews closed portions of the 110 and 101 freeways as well as several surface streets.
The southbound 110 and 101 Freeways were reopened by 4:40 a.m., the California Highway Patrol tweeted around 4:40 a.m. The northbound 110 remained closed between the 10 and 101 Freeways.
Battling the fires was especially difficult for firefighters because glass was “cascading down around them,” Moore said.
It was expected to be closed until around 8 a.m., officials on scene said.
“If you can imagine they have a large construction site that they have active fire, which is like a blow torch, but behind them they have the radiant heat that’s affecting the buildings behind them and surrounding them. So they had shards of glass that were coming down, falling from the sky,” he said.
Another fire broke out at a two-story apartment under renovation at 2871 W. 7th St. in Westlake around 4:09 a.m., Terrazas said.
About 100 firefighters battled the blaze. It was unclear if they were in addition to the 250 said to be fighting the downtown L.A. fire.
Officials were investigating if the two fires were related. Terrazas said so far there was no reason to believe they were connected.
There were no immediate reports of injuries or a cause of the fire.
As customary for such a large fire, arson investigators were on scene.
Multimillion dollars worth of damage was expected, LAFD Capt. Jaime Moore said.
LAFD helicopters were also deployed and were surveying the area for more potential fires.
