A four-alarm fire broke out at General Motors’s Advanced Design Center in Pasadena, California on Wednesday night. According to a report by the Los Angeles Times, more than 100 firefighters and a hazardous materials team were called to battle the blaze, and preliminary reports indicate multiple concept cars that the company was working on may have been destroyed or damaged.
The Pasadena design center consists of 149,000 square feet of space situated on about eight acres of land, part of a $71 million investment GM made a couple of years ago. The campus is a research and development hub for advanced technologies and future vehicles. Just this summer, GM revealed a Corvette design study that was created at the Pasadena facility.
Lithium-ion batteries present in the building contributed to the difficulty in fighting this fire, according to CBS News, as extinguishing infernos fueled by those batteries requires different techniques. Firefighters reportedly called the fire “stubborn” and “difficult to get to,” and thick smoke allegedly contributed to firefighters spending an hour simply looking for the source of the blaze. At one point a firefighter became trapped in the building and sent out a mayday call, according to the Times. However, he was located and rescued without injuries.
It’s still unknown what caused the fire, as the blaze remains under investigation.“This is one of the largest structure fires we’ve had in Pasadena in many, many years,” Pasadena Fire Department spokesperson Lisa Derderian told the Times.
CBS News Los Angeles was on the scene, and obtained an overhead view which allows us to see the full scale of the fire. They also report that clean up could take several days.
Thankfully, no injuries were reported. However, this is obviously a significant blow to GM and its design team; hopefully, the campus can resume normal operations quickly.
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