Firefighters battle a blaze at a shopping center in east Fort Worth on Sunday. A clerk at the 99 Cent Store, where the fire began, was injured, and businesses were heavily damaged.
Incense sparked a fire in a Woodhaven Boulevard discount store that injured a clerk and heavily damaged businesses nearby in a small shopping center, a city Fire Department spokesman said.
The incense "was apparently burning in the storeroom and in the store itself," Lt. Kent Worley said. "It got too close to a combustible and started the fire."
The injured clerk, Iqbal Samsudin, watched from across the street, his left hand covered in gauze, as firefighters worked to put out the fire that began at 1:15 p.m. in the storeroom of the 99 Cent Store at 1017 Woodhaven.
The fire, which occurred next door to a fire station, heavily damaged the store and an out-of-business convenience store next to it. A coin laundry had mostly fire damage, and a tax business and restaurant had smoke damage, Worley said.
Damage was estimated at $500,000 to building contents and $1 million to the shopping center, Worley said. The center appears to be a total loss, he said.
The proximity of the fire station presented its own set of problems, Worley said. If a station is near a fire, scene commanders have less time to set a strategy, and the first crew generally has to wait for other units before they can hook up to hydrants, he said.
About 45 firefighters battled the three-alarm fire, and 15 fire vehicles responded, Worley said. The National Weather Service reported winds gusting to nearly 30 mph in the area Sunday afternoon. Worley said the winds whipped through vents in the roof and fanned the flames in a "blowtorch effect."
Samsudin said he was the only employee at the store, which had three or four customers, when the fire started. One of the customers, Tamaia Trim, 19, said she noticed smoke and reported it to Samsudin.
"I said, 'Something is burning.' He said it was incense," she said. It quickly became obvious from a large amount of smoke collecting at the ceiling that it was not incense, she said.
The store had a fire extinguisher, but Samsudin said he didn't know how to operate it. He handed it to another customer, Lakresha Holland, 20. Holland said she pulled the pin in the handle to activate the extinguisher and squeezed it once to make sure it worked. After looking in the storeroom filled with smoke and fire, she decided it was no use.
Samsudin said he then took the extinguisher and tried to put the fire out but then gave up. He was trying to get a box of paper goods out of the storeroom when his hand was burned, Samsudin said.
Samsudin said no incense was burning in the store when the fire started.
