Fire Engineering Magazine: Medical Records Destroyed; Warehouse Blaze Last Week Damaged Storage Business

Posted on Jul 1, 2010 in Records Management News

http://www.fireengineering.com/index/articles/Wire_News_Display/1214950664.html

Hun­dreds of med­ical records per­ished in a large ware­house fire last week that started in a heat­ing, ven­ti­la­tion and air con­di­tion­ing unit, fire offi­cials said.

The fire at 1301 Broad­way NE caused about $10 mil­lion in dam­ages, Albu­querque Fire Depart­ment Chief James Breen said.

Fire offi­cials were still work­ing with the owner of TMM Busi­ness Record Stor­age to try to recover med­ical records that did not burn. It was unclear whether the warehouse’s med­ical records belonged to Albu­querque res­i­dents, but calls to TMM were not returned Tues­day. A mes­sage on the company’s web­site says the com­pany has not assessed the damage.

More than 75 fire­fight­ers, includ­ing those at the Bureau of Alco­hol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explo­sives, responded to the blaze on June 23. Breen said the fire was acci­den­tal and started in the HVAC unit at Cross Coun­try Auto Parts, on the south­east cor­ner of the build­ing. He said the unit was work­ing well and inspected in April. “It’s the largest fire in recent mem­ory for the Albu­querque Fire Depart­ment,” Breen said. The three-alarm fire took days to put out. “What really made this a sig­nif­i­cant event was the high winds,” Breen said. Clouds of smoke could be seen for miles as heavy winds car­ried them across the down­town area. Other busi­nesses at the ware­house are Fac­tory Motor Parts and Cot­ton­wood Sales and Dis­tri­b­u­tion Inc.

Breen said recov­er­ing the undam­aged med­ical records is a pri­or­ity but fire­fight­ers can­not safely enter the build­ing yet.

Copy­right 2010 Albu­querque Jour­nal
Albu­querque Jour­nal (New Mexico)

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