An enormous 2-alarm fire broke out Saturday evening at a building on the University of South Florida St. Petersburg campus, coughing up a plume of smoke that stretched for miles over the Tampa Bay area.
Fire officials did not say which building was on fire, but an alert sent by the college to students and staff said it was the Marine Science Lab.
The Pinellas 911 active calls site showed more than 50 apparatus had been summoned to the scene, a substantial call out.
St. Petersburg Fire Rescue said in a news release about 6:30 p.m. that units were on the scene of “an active two-alarm structure fire at a commercial building on the USF St. Petersburg campus.” The cause is under investigation. The building was evacuated with no reported injuries, officials said.
Frank Biafora stood in Poynter Park and watched the smoke billowing from across the water.
Biafora is the Interim Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at USF St. Petersburg. He learned about the fire after the university sent its emergency text message and then made his way downtown.
“We have faculty members who have research labs there. This looks like total devastation,” Biafora said. “We’ve all been checking in on each other.”
He said there was an electrical storm that came through the area in the lead-up and speculated that could have been the cause, but he’s waiting to hear more.
“We are actually quite lucky that the wind is taking this to the east of us because we have residence halls and a whole lot of students on this campus,” Biafora said. “If it was coming west, it could be really dangerous right now.”
Allison Jolly also watched the flames from the shore. She has been the USF Sailing coach for 21 years, she said. The team usually practices in the afternoon, but had a morning practice today by coincidence.
“Thank goodness,” said Jolly, looking out at her team’s boats, docked to the left of the building in flames. “This looks like a total, total loss. I know they keep labs with marine life in there. It’s one thing to have equipment ruined, but to have years of research go up in flames is so sad.”
Jolly said she wondered about how the building’s age might have contributed to the fire.
“It was a really old building and probably lacked some of the modern fire prevention things,” she said.
This is a breaking news story that will be updated as more information becomes available.
