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Crews battle 3-alarm warehouse fire in southwest Baltimore

Posted at 6:04 AM, Apr 21, 2017
and last updated 2017-04-21 17:14:58-04
For more than a century, its name was synonymous with top of the line, high-quality furniture, but it's been decades now since the demise of the Royal Furniture Company in Baltimore.
 
"It's been vacant for 20 years,” said Wayne Morris who lives nearby, “I'm sure everybody has been running in and out of there and probably having a lot of squatters and stuff like that."
 
A little more than a year after fire tore through an elevator shaft in the building, early Friday another fire spread quickly throughout the structure.
 
"Upon arrival, units were faced with heavy smoke and fire showing from a three-story, vacant warehouse," said Baltimore City Fire Spokeswoman Blair Adams.
 
Longtime residents like Robert Horn were actually cheering for the building to burn to the ground.
 
"It's an eyesore to the neighborhood, along with the rest of these abandoned houses," said Horn who claims the last time he complained to the city, it took three weeks before someone tried to board it up securely, "i've called.  The door is open.  You've got little kids going up.  I was afraid something was going to happen to the kids you know the way these whackos around here are."
 
What was once 85,000 square feet of storage space for fine goods had turned into something much darker in the decades since its use.
 
"It's very dark and dim... A lot of trash in there,” said Morris, “There weren't a lot of windows boarded up so I'm sure there's a lot of rodents running through that building right there."
 
At this point, investigators are still trying to determine what might have caused the fire.