PORTLAND, Ore. — A fire took nearly 100 firefighters to put out flames from a 100-year-old building on North Thompson Street on Monday.
However, firefighters remained in the building on Tuesday to prevent the flames from escalating again.
The flames destroyed the 26,000-square-foot structure and a plume of black smoke covered the sky and affected visibility on Interstate 5. The plume could be seen for miles.
According to Portland Fire & Rescue, the fire was caused by grease accumulated in one of the commercial enterprise exhausts at Shin Shin Foods, a business that manufactures noodles.
An aerial ladder poured nearly 2,000 gallons of water per minute onto the structure at one point.
Part of the roof of the building collapsed and, fearing that the building could collapse, firefighters stayed away from the building while they battled the fire.
“The ceiling may be holding up the walls, so, if the ceiling is an actual functional part to keep those walls up and down and it burns, then we’re going to make these walls fall to the side, so that we don’t have any of them our members within that collapse zone,” said PF&R spokesman Rick Graves.
All employees escaped safely and no injuries were reported.
Val Babiy owns an industrial building next to Shin Shin and said that as soon as the fire started, he received calls from tenants and neighbors in the area.
“The flames came very close to our building. Luckily, there is an alley separating the buildings. My concern is for our tenants in the building and also for the neighboring buildings,” he said.
Babiy said his building appeared to be undamaged and all of its tenants were evacuated.
He added that when he bought the building in 2018, the city required him to install a fire suppression system.
Many old buildings in the city do not have fire suppression systems.
According to Portland Fire & Rescue, older buildings, like Shin Shin, do not need to have sprinkler systems. The fire department said the noodle-making business did not have sprinkler systems. While firefighters said sprinklers would not have completely stopped Monday’s fire, they could have slowed its growth.
At one point, Interstate 5 was not closed during the fire.
