SCRANTON -- Firefighters in Scranton remain on the scene of a smoldering warehouse fire in the city and they expect to be fighting it for several days.
The fire caused part of the Sandone Tire warehouse to collapse early Thursday morning.
Seeing the ruins in the daylight is staggering. There are only two walls still standing at the Sandone Tire warehouse on Wyoming Avenue.
Firefighters tell us that the fire is still burning and it could for several days.
At the same time, the rest of the building is at risk of collapse.
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The roof of the warehouse gave way early Thursday morning. Not long after that, the building's back wall crumbled to the ground.
Scranton's assistant fire chief says right now a demolition crew is on its way to start slowly demolishing what's left of the building.
In the meantime, firefighters have set up unmanned hoses to keep putting water on the fire and keep firefighters safe.
We talked to the owners of Sandone Tire Thursday morning.
"Pretty devastated," said Mike Sandone. "It was something that we didn't expect was going to be as bad as this when the initial smoke started coming out of the building at the far end. And somehow during the course of the night it just seemed to spread and mushroom and move over."
"We had two things against us: the construction of the building which is many years old, and of a different type of construction with walls that were probably filled with sawdust and things like that to insulate it as an ice house or a cold storage facility, plus the contents, which are tires, and when tires burn they burn hot. So, I'm not so sure the outcome would have been different if we had better access, things like that," said Scranton Assistant Fire Chief Jim Floryshak.
Sandone Tire has other facilities in Taylor, Stroudsburg, and near Harrisburg open for business.
Four Scranton firefighters were treated for breathing in too much smoke Wednesday night but other than that, there were no injuries to report.
Some streets near the fire scene are still shut down.