OCALA, Fla \u2013 An overnight fire at St. Paul A.M.E. Church in Ocala left a church hall unsafe and the building condemned, officials said.<\/p>\n
Ocala Fire Rescue crews were dispatched about 10:24 p.m. Saturday to a structure fire at the church. Firefighters arrived to find a two-story building filled with smoke, with smoke billowing from the rear, according to the department.<\/p>\n
Firefighters faced zero visibility and extreme heat as they advanced hose lines and searched for the source of the fire, officials said.<\/p>\n
Crews initially believed the fire originated on the second floor after spotting dark smoke and using thermal imaging that indicated temperatures were above 375 degrees at the top of a stairwell, officials said. <\/p>\n
During a primary search, crews later located the seat of the fire in a first-floor assembly hall and repositioned to extinguish it.<\/p>\n
After the fire was put out, crews checked for hot spots and potential extensions and ventilated the building. <\/p>\n
A fire investigator and building inspector were requested, and officials later determined the fire was electrical and accidental, the department said.<\/p>\n
The building was condemned because of extensive smoke and fire damage, officials said. No injuries were reported.<\/p>\n
According to an official release, the Prevention Division, the Ocala Police Department, Ocala Electric Utility, the Building Department, and Marion County Fire Rescue also responded.<\/p>\n
Breaking News Alerts<\/p>\n
Get breaking news alerts delivered to your inbox.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 by WKMG ClickOrlando – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OCALA, Fla \u2013 An overnight fire at St. Paul A.M.E. Church in Ocala left a church hall unsafe…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":274478,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[117266,855,96022,28,30,29,2649,117267],"class_list":["post-274477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-church-fire","tag-fire","tag-fire-damage","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-ocala","tag-structure-fire-florida"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274477","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=274477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274477\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/274478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=274477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=274477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=274477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}