Vacant Oklahoma City motel catches fire twice in 24 hours
OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) - Two separate parts of an empty motel in southeast Oklahoma City caught fire on Sunday.
"It was crazy. I've never seen anything like that, I mean not twice in 24 hours,” said Bryan Morgan.
The first fire happened Sunday morning.
Bryan Morgan works at the Burger King next door. His employees called 911.
"I just kind of panicked and stopped what i was doing and came out to see if everyone was okay,” said Morgan. “I just knew we had to react."
In the nearly 100 degree heat, firefighters, loaded up in heavy gear, knocked down the smoldering flames inside the complex’s front building.
"They got access to it really quick,” said Russell Huffman, an OKCFD Battalion Chief. “We had to force the doors and things like that but we trained on that."
Crews were called back around 11:30 Sunday night. This time flames were coming from a building on the south side of the property.
The rooms are so charred, they’re unrecognizable. Morgan told KFOR he’d like to see the complex re-purposed.
"It is a problem. If it continues to stay like that… It's people in and out in and out all the time,” said Morgan. "We get all this stuff cleaned up and stuff I mean it'd been a better area for people to want to come to."
The causes of both fires is still under investigation.