Firefighter recovering from heat exhaustion after battling flames in Collier County

Reporter: Michelle Alvarez
Published: Updated:

Smoke in the air and emergency lights flashing as crews fight a massive fire in Collier County.

“Things were kind of hectic at the beginning, but we’re doing a really good job cleaning everything up,” said Sal Blasi, who works for Servpro, a restoration company located down the road.

It happened at Progress Rail, a transit corporation on Mercantile Avenue just before 5 a.m. on Friday. 16 workers were able to get out of the building.

“The fire is under investigation,” said Tiffany Wood, Public Information Officer for Greater Naples Fire Rescue District. “Our fire investigators will be coming out to investigate as to what actually happened. Was it that heating element that started the fire, or could have been something else, but they’ll be coming out over the next several hours to investigate that.”

Greater Naples Fire Rescue crews, along with others, were called out.

“A lot of smoke coming out on the side over there and look kind of near the air conditioning, but the firefighters are all in here doing a good job working really hard,” Blasi added.

WINK News met Blasi on the scene. He is looking to help with the fire damage.

“There’ll be a lot of….goodness. Looks probably still a lot of smoke in there,” Blasi added. “But it just depends who’s in there, and there’s a lot of machinery. So just a lot of black just it’s probably very slipping in there and just it’s a big mess.”

Crews with North Collier Fire and Naples Fire Rescue came to assist, and one City of Naples firefighter was taken to the hospital.

“It has been super-hot recently even early in the morning and humid and when they put on that extra 60 pounds of gear or bunker gear etc. Sometimes it just hits you and you’re out. So thankfully he’s going to be okay and we’ll make a full recovery but as of right now he’s at the hospital,” said Wood.

The company said they don’t know how long they will be closed, but they’re keeping their workers updated.

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