Residents speak out after massive industrial fire in Roseville, Michigan: "The smoke was pure black"
Residents living and working in Roseville, Michigan, neighborhoods were alerted on Tuesday about a shelter-in-place warning following an industrial fire. Some residents told CBS News Detroit it was a scary shock to find out the air here might not have been safe.
"I saw the alert on Facebook, and it said to shelter, so I just made sure to have all my windows and doors closed, and I was just watching Facebook for updates," said Sue Economides.
Just after 10 a.m. Tuesday, the Roseville dispatch center received a phone call from someone saying they heard a loud boom and started to see smoke.
"The smoke was pure black for about the first 30 minutes," said Jeff.
The Roseville Fire Department responded to the RCO Engineering building, which was on fire. Because the building contained many chemicals, Macomb County Emergency Management issued an emergency notice to shelter in place.
Keith Jacobs, the Chief of the Roseville Fire Department said, "We do have some apartment complexes that are downwind, we do have numerous restaurants that are downwind so as soon as we knew that everybody was out of the building we were able to focus on the fact that the immediate building needs to be protected and that anybody downwind needs to be protected.
A hazmat crew eventually discerned that there was no chemical danger to the surrounding community, and the shelter-in-place was lifted around two hours later, before 2 p.m.
The fire was also entirely put out by the early afternoon, but it was still scary to think about what could've happened for the residents I spoke to. Amanda Ferris told me she was petrified when she found out her kid's school was in a shelter-in-place.
"They sent me an email right away letting me know they were on kind of a lockdown that they were shutting the doors and windows to make sure the kids were safe," said Amanda Ferris.
Crews have not yet determined the cause of the fire, but thankfully, no RCO Engineering employees or firefighters were injured in today's fire.
