ROSS TOWNSHIP, Pa. — The Warby Parker store inside Ross Park Mall now has a sign on the door saying it is closed due to damage, and the mall still smelled of light smoke Monday afternoon after a fire early Sunday morning.
Firefighters were called to the Ross Park Mall around 4:15 a.m. Sunday for smoke coming from under the floor in a construction zone.
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“The fire underneath the concrete floor isn’t something we typically run into,” said Berkeley Hills Fire Chief Dillon Coleman. “The workers were tearing up the floor as part of their reconstruction plan up there.”
Coleman said at first, the smoke was light.
“Whenever they initially went in, they had the floor exposed just a little bit in the area they were working in, the fire had moved from that area further underneath the floor that wasn’t exposed yet,” Coleman told Channel 11’s Andrew Havranek.
The first fire, where the floor was already exposed, was put out in an hour. But the fire had spread, which led to an all-hands-on-deck effort to put it out for nearly 6 more hours.
“We had to call in specialized equipment to bring more of the floor up, drill holes into the floor, and stick cameras down underneath because the concrete was six to eight inches deep and it was reinforced with a lot of rebar,” Coleman said.
“I don’t think that they ever anticipated having to pull six to eight inches of concrete up with rebar intertwined in it, every two inches I think it was,” Coleman said. “It was a very solid floor.”
The mall construction workers helped firefighters, using their excavator and jackhammer to break through the concrete. One of those workers was evaluated for carbon monoxide inhalation but was okay.
“At one point, we did outfit the workers with our self-contained breathing apparatus to be able to provide them with fresh air whenever the smoke became too much for them to be able to operate in that,” Coleman said.
Firefighters from West Deer and North Huntingdon were called to bring ventilation fans.
The mall was able to open Sunday afternoon after air quality tests.
While no firefighters were hurt fighting the fire, Ross Township Police said three firefighters from North Huntingdon who were bringing a ventilation fan to the mall were taken to the hospital after an accident on McKnight Road. They were not seriously hurt.
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