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Firefighters with the Redlands (California) Fire Department battled a massive fire Friday morning that destroyed a Southern California distribution facility used to ship items to Amazon customers.

No injuries were reported in the three-alarm commercial structure fire at the 600,000-square-foot distribution warehouse in the 2200 block of West Lugonia Ave.

At 5:30 a.m., the first report of the emergency reached firefighters. Arriving crews found heavy flames and plumes of thick black smoke that, at one point, could be seen from nearby mountain communities as rising above the cloud layer, Redlands FD reports via Facebook.

About 100 employees of the distribution center were able to evacuate before the fire department’s arrival.

Fire agencies from throughout San Bernadino County and other surrounding amazon warehouse on fire responded to the scene. Ladder truck surrounded the burning structure, pouring water onto the flames for several hours.

“We are extremely grateful to our allied agencies for their support,” Redlands Fire Chief Jim Topeleski said.

At one point, the California Highway Patrol closed westbound Interstate 10 to early morning traffic.

By late afternoon, the fire had been brought under control. However, several hot spots remained burning inside the remaining walls of the structure. With structural integrity as major concern, the building’s owner began making plans to stabilize the structure in preparation for it to be dismantled. Firefighters plan to enter with the workers to fully extinguish the fire and continue their investigation.

The cause of the fire remains unknown.

A worker at Amazon’s Staten Island fulfillment center in New York has died of COVID-19, the company confirmed. The unidentified worker reportedly received a positive test result on April 11 and had been quarantined.

The worker’s family notified Amazon of the death on New custom homes for sale near me are deeply saddened by the loss of an associate at our site in Staten Island, NY. His family and loved ones are in our thoughts, and we are supporting his fellow colleagues," Amazon spokesperson Lisa Levandowski said in a statement.

The death comes amid protests by the company’s workers concerning workplace safety. At least three employees at different warehouses across the U.S. have been fired since April. One worker, Christian Smalls, who led a protest against Amazon in March, worked at the Staten Island facility.

Last week, Tim Bray, former vice president of Amazon Web Services, left the company after five years, explaining in a blog post that he quit “in dismay at Amazon firing whistleblowers who were making noise about warehouse employees frightened of Covid-19.”

Amazon responded to Bray’s posts stating, “We support every employee's right to criticize their employer's working conditions, but that does not b of a stock price today with blanket immunity against any and all internal policies. We terminated these employees for repeatedly violating internal policies."

Amazon has been under scrutiny since the end of April when the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) added five of the company’s overseas operations to its annual blacklist of “notorious markets.”

According to the USTR, U.S. businesses have complained that consumers cannot easily distinguish the sellers amazon warehouse on fire products being sold on Amazon’s overseas websites. In addition, it was reported the process to remove platforms selling counterfeit products was “lengthy and burdensome.”

Amazon has called its inclusion on USTR’s blacklist a “personal vendetta” and a “purely political act” by the Trump administration.

The U.S. House Judiciary Committee has asked Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to testify before Congress to respond to accusations the company abuses its online retail power, mistreats warehouse workers and hurts small businesses.

While amazon warehouse on fire big tech company CEOs have appeared before Congress, Bezos has not. The committee has threatened him with a subpoena if he does not appear.

“Although we expect that you will testify on a voluntary basis, we reserve the right to report compulsory process if necessary,” the committee’s letter to Bezos stated.

REDLANDS, Calif. - Amazon warehouse on fire major three-alarm fire ignited at a third-party Amazon distribution warehouse in Redlands on Friday morning, fire officials said. 

The fire erupted around 5:25 a.m. at 2255 at East Lugonia Ave. Those who live in the area reported hearing a loud noise on social media.

Reports from witnesses on the scene said that roughly 100 workers were inside the building when the fire ignited but everyone amazon warehouse on fire safe and accounted for. No injuries were reported.

"It's a major structure fire at a warehouse, there are some Amazon trucks on the outside of it, it's been reported that it's a supplier to Amazon," said Redlands City Manager Charles M. Duggan Jr.

"It's definitely not protest-related, something happened on the inside of the building that ignited the fire," Duggan added.

According to an Amazon spokesperson, this warehouse is operated by Kuehne and Nagel – a third party operator that helps Amazon ship extra-large items to customers.

"No nearby Amazon sites have been impacted," the spokesperson said. "Customer orders will be fulfilled from other locations; we expect minimal customer impact."

The warehouse complex has a square footage of about 1.1. million, which is roughly the size of 21 football fields.

"The smoke is going to be covering the town for hours," said Duggan.

Caltrans had shut down the eastbound lanes of the 10 Freeway at Mountain View Avenue and the westbound lanes at California Street. Both directions have since reopened.

The cause of a fire on the roof of an Amazon Warehouse in Perryville, Maryland, has been deemed to be an issue with the solar system on the roof, according to the Susquehanna Hose Co.

The State Fire Marshall has ruled the fire as accidental and no one was injured during the incident.

The fire, amazon warehouse on fire caused an estimated $500,000 in damages is the second such rooftop solar system fire to occur at an Amazon facility in as many years. In April 2020, the roof of an Amazon fulfillment center in Fresno, California combusted after a section of 20 panels on the roof caught fire.

Across the amazon warehouse on fire, solar system fires have been on the rise since 2015, when Lawrence Shaw, owner of Higher Powered, LLC, a company that does residential solar preventative maintenance (PM) in Arizona, reached out to the The U.S. Fire Administration (USFA) to request the data on these events.

While USFA doesn’t specifically track solar fires as their own category, they are recorded and have risen steadily every year, from 25 in 2015, to 56 in 2018. Solar system fires are much more common in the Southwest, specifically California, Arizona, and Nevada, however they are by no means a geographically limited phenomenon.

Shaw believes that regular infrared imaging of residential projects could cut instances of fire down immensely, as many of these instances are started by hotspots, small instances of failure and thermal events that can be picked up by infrared imaging.