Brian Irizarry was spraying lacquer on wooden cabinet doors before he saw the flames ignite.
“It went up like a flash fire,” the 31-year-old said as he smoked a cigarette across the street from Mica-Mode Cabinetry.
“I started spraying water on that b***h,” he said to his coworker.
Cans of lacquer started popping and flying all over the room and out of the roof, he said.
Irizarry tried to put the fire out until another co-worker told him to get out.
“I got out right before the explosion,” Irizarry said. “It was those 60 seconds.”
Mica-Mode went up in flames at about 4 p.m. Wednesday.
Seven minutes later, Gainesville Fire Rescue was on the scene.
Three minutes after that firefighters were spraying water on the burning building.
All workers were able to get out of the building unscathed, and no firefighters were injured while putting out the flames.
By about 5:30 p.m., a light smoke poured onto the street and was still visible in the sky from about a mile away.
Fire trucks lined the road as firefighters weaved in and out of the building and in between cars.
Workers from Mica-Mode and the surrounding buildings stood and stared as the sky grew darker.
The source of the fire is unknown and under investigation, said Gainesville Fire Rescue Assistant Chief JoAnne Rice.
The Fire Marshal was called in to check it out.
There were 28 firefighters, three tower trucks, four engines and a handful of patrol cars on the scene — a majority of the department’s resources.
Rice said the fire caused heavy flames and thick, billowing smoke. Some of the flames jumped to another building south of the cabinet business.
At about 10 p.m., Rice did not have an estimate on the cost of damages.
Satchel’s Pizza tweeted out videos of the fire.
“My heart sinks when I see smoke like that,” the restaurant wrote, remembering the fire that temporarily closed down their business on Feb. 28, 2012.
Brandon Turner, 29, was in the Mica-Mode building with Irizarry when the fire started. He was in the break room when he first saw smoke.
“People were yelling, ‘fire, fire!’” he said.
Turner grabbed a hose and tried to put it out.
“Nothing you can do,” he said as he watched the building where he worked burn.
[A version of this story ran on page 1 on 12/4/2014]
Gainesville Fire Rescue Lt. D.G. Campbell Jr. stands with another firefighter as he sprays water on a building neighboring Mica-Mode Cabinetry that caught fire at about 4 p.m. Wednesday. No one was injured in the fire, according to Gainesville Fire Rescue Assistant Chief JoAnne Rice.
