Only on Action News Jax, we’re getting a firsthand account of what it was like fighting the devastating parking garage fire at Jacksonville International Airport on Friday.
The Jacksonville Fire and Rescue Department Battalion Chief who commanded those firefighters returned to the garage Tuesday at JIA with Action News Jax’s Madison Foglio.
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“My fire station is over on Main Street and as soon as we got to 95, we could see the column of smoke so we knew we had a very large fire,” JFRD Battalion Chief Charles Drysdale said. “We’re getting additional reports of people evacuating, having trouble evacuating. So we knew it was all hands on deck.”
The fire broke out in the south portion of the Hourly Parking Garage around noon on Friday. JFRD and Jacksonville Aviation Authority officials confirm at least 50 vehicles were destroyed as a result of the fire.
RELATED: Jacksonville International Airport Hourly Parking Garage Fire: Timeline of events
Drysdale served as the incident commander for this fire. In a nutshell, he was in charge of the firefighters’ response to the fire.
“A lot of explosions. The fire was bright orange. As you can see, it’s basically about 200 feet long, going about 40-50 foot up in the air. You can hear the glass breaking as the windows are failing, the tires are blowing up. Lots of things on cars can catch fire. More than likely, the gas tanks were rupturing and pouring gas on the fire, so we were getting a lot of sounds that you normally wouldn’t get from a smaller fire,” Drysdale said.
He was the one who made the call to pull the firefighters out of the garage. Foglio asked Drysdale what made him make that decision to pull the firefighters out of the garage.
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“The report of the initial company, Engine 16, and his officer about the conditions. Plus, what we can see and our concerns about structural collapse,” Drysdale said.
Drysdale said that one of his main concerns when combatting this fire was the water supply.
“To give the airport a lot of credit, we were able to flow, probably at its peak, 4,000 gallons a minute of water, which is a tremendous amount of water. And we had that on the fire within 14 minutes,” Drysdale said.
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In the end, Drysdale said the fire could have been a lot worse.
“If we would not got a handle on it, it would have spread throughout the entire parking garage maybe into the other parking garage,” Drysdale said.
No word yet on what started the fire, but on Tuesday afternoon, JAA released the incident report listing a mid-sized dark colored BMW as the car appearing to catch on fire first in the Hourly Parking Garage on Friday.
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