A large fire broke out on Friday afternoon at a Medline medical supply warehouse just west of Tracy, California. The blaze began at around 1:40 p.m. near Promontory Parkway, close to where Interstate 205 and Interstate 580 meet, and crews remained at the scene for hours afterward.
The facility is a roughly one million square foot building that sits on a site of about 1,800 acres. As the fire took hold, that enormous warehouse was effectively destroyed and demolished, with smoke continuing to pour from the structure as the response went on.
According to the coverage, Medline operates 53 such facilities across the country, and this one is its largest, serving as a hub for the company. The surrounding area is a major warehousing district that is also home to operations for Amazon, Best Buy, Home Depot and FedEx, yet crews managed to keep the flames confined to just this one building.
Despite the size of the fire, no injuries were reported. The roughly 1,100 employees who work at the Medline site were all able to get out of the building safely and were accounted for, and workers at the neighboring FedEx and Amazon operations were also evacuated and accounted for.
The main public concern then shifted to air quality. Because the site is a medical supply facility, holding everything from wheelchairs and oxygen tanks to hospital beds as well as various chemicals, there were worries about what substances might be in the thick black smoke. Residents in the rapidly growing Tracy and Lathrop area, which is now home to close to 100,000 people, described packing up and being ready to leave as the haze drifted over their neighborhoods.
The early stage of the response was complicated by a water pressure problem. The building's own sprinkler and private firefighting system was not operating when firefighters first arrived, which initially hampered their efforts to get water onto the flames.
After those first difficulties, the municipal water supply came on strongly and helped stabilize the situation, allowing firefighters to keep pouring water onto the fire. Crews also had to contend with high winds and high temperatures as they worked.
Multiple agencies responded to the scene, and firefighters were able to quickly knock down a number of spot fires that flared up nearby, bringing them mostly under control. At the time of the live report, smoke was still coming from the building and a crane was being used to shoot water down onto it as the operation continued.