A building leased by the St. Vincent de Paul Society of Lane County near Chad Drive and Shadow View Drive was damaged late Sunday after a fire broke out among stacked boxes of donated items.
Multiple units from the Eugene-Springfield Fire Department responded to the fire scene just before 8 p.m. The fire appears to have ignited in a building labeled “Studio 4.”
“There was so much smoke that made it very difficult for us to get into the seed of the fire,” said Wayne Morris, a battalion chief with ESF. “While crews were operating interior, we did have a collapse of some of those boxes. We had to pull everybody out and make a withdrawal of the building.”
No firefighters were injured during the collapse and crews had to “wait it out” until a forklift arrived on the scene to help pull some boxes out of the building to get to the root of the fire.
By 10 p.m., the fire was under control and its cause was under investigation.
This article originally appeared on Register-Guard: Fire erupts in Eugene donation center, box collapse hinders firefighters