One fire, one covered lot, 27 work trucks. The blaze behind a Verizon-occupied building in Waldorf, Maryland, early Sunday morning took out a whole fleet.
A passerby spotted flames at 3:09 a.m. on October 18 in the rear parking area at 3 Industrial Park Drive. That’s according to the Maryland State Fire Marshal’s notice of investigation. By the time it was over, 27 commercial vehicles, everything inside them, and the roof over their parking area were damaged or destroyed. The marshal’s office puts the loss at $3.8 million. No one was hurt, and both the cause and the exact starting point are still under investigation.
A Two-Alarm Night
The Charles County volunteer fire association’s incident update says Waldorf Volunteer Fire Department units arrived in under five minutes. They found numerous utility vehicles heavily involved in fire beneath a covered parking structure next to the building. Crews focused on stopping the spread and keeping the fire out of the building itself.
The call went to two alarms. About 100 firefighters responded, and the state fire marshal’s notice says it took roughly 60 minutes to bring the fire under control.
Read the Fine Print on That Dollar Figure
The total is less useful than the breakdown. The fire marshal splits its estimate into $3.5 million for “structure” and $300,000 for “contents.”…