“It’s been a problem structure for us,” Mercer said.
Flames shot several feet in the air, and the blaze can be seen from 15 miles away. Firefighters shut down several streets surrounding the warehouse, located at 999 Laurel Ave., and evacuated some homes nearby.
Firefighters were forced to fight the fire from the outside of the building because several walls of the building had already collapsed, Mercer said.
The warehouse is about two blocks from a fire station, he said.
“First thing they did was take care of neighbors across the street on Laurel Avenue,” Mercer said. “With the heat from the fire, it’s really hot, it ignited the structure on the other side of the street. They did a great job of getting those people evacuated from the building.”
The large amount of damage will make determining a cause difficult, and there were reports of people leaving the building shortly before the fire, Mercer said.
Barry Diangelo was up and filming the fire even before the fire department arrived at around 4:30 a.m.
"It was scary at night time because the clouds of smoke was billowing up, you could feel the heat," he said.
He lives two blocks over and started knocking on his neighbors’ doors.
"I just started knocking on doors and they go like, 'Who is it?' Then they looked out the window and was like, 'Oh my God!' You could see the flames from our front porch," he said.
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Several power poles in the vicinity also caught on fire.
No injuries were reported.