Two Garment District Fires in Five Days
For the second time in less than a week, a fire adjacent to the Los Angeles Fashion District prompted scores of firefighters to respond to the blaze.
Smoke could be seen billowing out of the sixth floor, or top floor, of the old Hamburger Department Store Building, located at 827 S. Broadway, at 2 p.m. on Oct. 20. Nearly 100 firefighters responded to the blaze, which took about 35 minutes to knock down.
Firefighters climbing ladders extending to the top floor found a pile of rags on fire inside a vacant area. The building is filled with cutting and sewing operations that make clothes for garment manufacturers.
Robert Franco, an assistant chief with the Los Angeles Fire Department, said investigators are looking into the cause of the blaze. He noted that they are taking an extra-close look at the fire because five days earlier, a similar blaze was knocked down at 830 S. Hill St., directly on the other side of the old Hamburger Department Store building, bought by the May Co. in 1923 for its department-store chain.
The Oct. 15 fire was on the ninth floor of the Hamburger’s annex building. It took 84 firefighters about 30 minutes to knock down that blaze, which also started in a pile of rags.
“It is very odd,” Franco said of the two similar fires. “So that puts this fire into a suspicious category. We definitely look at those things. The way the economy is going, we are scrutinizing every fire very closely to make sure someone is not trying to burn out their business.”
Franco said the damages from the Oct. 20 fire were still being tabulated. Smoke damage was confined to the sixth floor, and there was some water damage to the fifth and sixth floors, Franco said. But occupants of the building were allowed back into their businesses once the water damage was cleaned up. —Deborah Belgum
