The Saturday afternoon fire at a Cahokia Heights tow lot created a smoke plume visible from St. Louis. The lot owner says the battery of an electric car exploded.
ST. CLAIR COUNTY, Ill. — Dozens of cars burned Saturday afternoon in St. Clair County at a tow lot fire, creating a large smoke plume visible from St. Louis.
‘We had the whole back lot of a tow company on fire, says Cahokia Fire Department Deputy Chief, Jordan Simmons. They were moving vehicles around with heavy equipment and struck the battery on a hybrid vehicle which caused the fire.”
“A lot of smoke. You can actually see it from in the far distance, so I came down to see what was going on and just a lot of flames,” says witness and former Kinloch fire deputy, Se’an Whiteside.
According to the St. Clair County Emergency Management Agency, the cars were on fire at Patterson Towing LLC at 499 N. 73rd Street in Cahokia Heights.
At least ten fire departments responded to the scene, including Midway, Camp Jackson, Cahokia, East St. Louis, Prairie Du Pont, Church Road, Alorton, Hollywood Heights, Millstadt and Villa Hills. According to Deputy Chief Simmons, it took crews at least 8 hours to extinguish the flames.
“The hydrant wasn’t enough to supply the amount of water that we needed at the time. We had to call in tankers and in doing so, we’ve flown 60,000 gallons of water. About 20 trips, tankers in total,” Simmons says.
The owner of the tow lot said an electrical issue started the fire and caused at least 100 cars to be damaged. The owner tells 5 On Your Side the tow lot mainly contained junk cars that were being scrapped. Despite the fire, he plans on reopening the business soon.
Firefighters said no one was hurt by the fire. The fire was contained to the tow lot and did not spread to any buildings.
