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Sirens were blaring and smoke was billowing after a fire broke out at the USF’s St. Petersburg campus Saturday night. \/ Tiffany Razzano <\/p>\nST. PETERSBURG, FL. \u2014 Firefighter raced to tackle a fire that broke out at the University of South Florida’s St. Petersburg campus Saturday night.<\/p>\n
According to campus police, the two-alarm fire broke out at about 5:20 p.m. in a lab building. Although the buildings were evacuated, no one was believed to have been inside the building when the fire broke out, police said.<\/p>\n
Sirens were blaring and smoke was billowing after a fire broke out at the USF’s St. Petersburg campus Saturday night. \/ Tiffany Razzano <\/p>\n
As of 8 p.m. sirens were still blaring and huge plumes of smoke were seen billowing from the site.<\/p>\n
Campus police reported that there were about 71 firetrucks at the scene.<\/p>\n
The fire sparked concern among residents.<\/p>\n
Nick Toth and Cindy Crowder, who live at The Beacon on Third, a condo building near campus, heard about the fire from friends and saw the smoke as they got home Saturday evening.<\/p>\n
“We went to the rooftop and saw the flames and the smoke,” Crowder told Patch. “It\u2019s crazy how big it is.”<\/p>\n
Then, they walked to the waterfront path near USF\u2019s Harbor Hall, a route they regularly take with their dog, to watch the fire across the marina.<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s really sad to see. There\u2019s a lot of data in there and a lot of old school information that\u2019s not even digitized, a lot of long-term studies that are going up in flames right now. It\u2019s just really sad,” Toth said.<\/p>\n
He has good friends who work in the building and have been texting him since the fire was reported.<\/p>\n
“I\u2019m getting texts like crazy,” Toth said. “They\u2019re all heartbroken over it. It\u2019s an older building and it\u2019s been there for a long time, so it\u2019s not surprising that it\u2019s burning the way it is. We\u2019re just curious how it started. There was a big lightning storm here.”<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
The massive fire also forced USF to cancel the Gibbs High School prom that was scheduled to take place in the campus ballroom on Saturday night.<\/p>\n
Four disappointed students had heard about the fire, but only learned that prom was canceled when they arrived at the campus.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy mom sent me the article [about it] as I was driving,\u201d Ellie Curtis, 17, told Patch.<\/p>\n
Khloe Temple, 18, said, \u201cThen Ellie had texted me and she was like, \u2018Dude, there\u2019s a fire,\u2019 and I was like, \u2018I know! I hope prom is still on.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Luckily, Gibbs\u2019 prom has been rescheduled for Sunday, the students said.<\/p>\n
But Temple is scheduled to work and is worried she might not be able to attend.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s all so crazy because it\u2019s our senior year and we have exams literally Monday and Tuesday, so it was planned for Saturday so that we would be able to have time to recover,\u201d she said, adding, \u201cBut it\u2019s scary to see. I\u2019m glad no one was inside.\u201d<\/p>\n
The story also makes for a prom they\u2019ll never forget, the group said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s quite the story,\u201d Ella Benson, also a senior at Gibbs, said. \u201cWe\u2019ve been standing looking at it and at one point, there was a rainbow, like, over the smoke. It was just very strange to see.\u201d<\/p>\n
Temple added, \u201cA weird juxtaposition.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. PETERSBURG, FL. \u2014 Firefighter raced to tackle a fire that broke out at the University of South…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":256059,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-256058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256058"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256058\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/256059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}