The Morning Call<\/p>\n
(TNS)<\/p>\n
Firefighters continue to battle a massive blaze at a vacant factory near the Allentown riverfront into early Thursday morning.<\/p>\n
The fire broke out at the former American Atelier furniture factory at\u00a0249 N. Front Street, in the area of\u00a0Gordon Street, around\u00a08:40 p.m. Wednesday\u00a0and has since gone to six-alarms.\u00a0Riverside Drive\u00a0runs along the back of the property.<\/p>\n
The blaze sent a plume of thick black smoke into the air, which was captured in photos taken from miles away.<\/p>\n
Allentown police and fire officials are requesting residents who live in that general area to shelter in place due to the heavy smoke. Residents who live on the 300 block of\u00a0Front Street\u00a0were asked to evacuate by exiting through their backyards, according to a message from fire Capt.\u00a0Joshua Brubaker.<\/p>\n
The fire spread to at least one row home across\u00a0Front Street, according to officials on scene.<\/p>\n
Fire Chief\u00a0Efrain Agosto\u00a0said he was not aware of any injuries. Agosto said when he arrived at the scene shortly after the fire broke out, the flames were so hot you could feel them from across the street.<\/p>\n
As flames consumed the factory building, neighbors several blocks away stood in the middle of\u00a0Front Street\u00a0as water ran down the street. Some of those residents said their cars were parked closer to the old factory. From about two blocks away on\u00a0Front Street, flames could still be seen shooting high into the air as of\u00a010:30 p.m.<\/p>\n
The Red Cross Pennsylvania Rivers Chapter\u00a0was working to open a shelter for displaced residents.\u00a0Resurrected Life Community\u00a0church\u00a0Pastor\u00a0Gregory Edwards\u00a0posted on Facebook<\/a>\u00a0that he was opening the \u201cLiberty Bell church\u201d on\u00a0Hamilton Street\u00a0to anyone who needed a place to go.<\/p>\n Displaced residents gathered in\u00a0Buck Boyle Park, across\u00a0Riverside Drive\u00a0behind the burning building, watching firefighters work late into the night.<\/p>\n Rafael Ruiz\u00a0held his chihuahua Leasha as he waited for word that he would be able to go back home. Ruiz, of the 200 block of\u00a0North Front Street, said he was asleep when he heard someone banging on the door. Firefighters were outside telling everyone to leave.<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t know what was happening, at first I didn\u2019t think it was real. The power was off and it was very confusing.\u201d<\/p>\n PPL has cut power to parts of the city\u2019s\u00a06th Ward\u00a0and\u00a01st Ward\u00a0neighborhoods, affecting 3,483 customers as of\u00a010 p.m., according to the utility\u2019s outage map.<\/p>\n County Executive\u00a0Josh Siegel\u00a0heard about the fire after leaving Wednesday night\u2019s\u00a0Lehigh County Board of Commissioners\u00a0meeting and drove to the scene. He praised the first responders who were working to help displaced residents and marveled at the numerous fire departments who were helping the effort, many from other counties.<\/p>\n \u201cYou get a real sense for mutual aid and how collaborative all the departments are. We all come to each others aid,\u201d Siegel said.<\/p>\n The\u00a0American Atelier\u00a0building had been slated for demolition under plans submitted by\u00a0Urban Residential Properties. The project calls for a new building with 267 apartments, 21,000 square feet of office space and 23,000 square feet of retail\/commercial space,\u00a0according to a 2025 Morning Call story<\/a>.<\/p>\n The building is down the street from Urban Residential\u2019s Neuweiler Lofts project at the site of the former Neuweiler Brewery.<\/p>\n This is a developing story. Check back for updates.<\/p>\n \u00a92026 The Morning Call. Visit\u00a0mcall.com<\/a>. Distributed by\u00a0Tribune Content Agency, LLC.<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Laurie Mason Schroeder, Morning Call staff The Morning Call (TNS) Firefighters continue to battle a massive blaze at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":247567,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120],"class_list":["post-247566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=247566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247566\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/247567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=247566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=247566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=247566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}