Oakland automotive body shop catches fire

OAKLAND – Firefighters from multiple municipalities surrounded an Oakland warehouse located at 17949 West Colonial Drive Saturday night as they battled the flames that engulfed the 6,000-square-foot building.

Orange County Fire Rescue, Winter Garden, Clermont and Lake County all responded because of where it’s located. 

“It kind of borders on a lot of different jurisdictions, so you know there was a lot of units out there but that was because of its location,” said Orange County Fire Rescue spokeswoman Ngoc Huynh. “It was only a one-alarm response.”

The Creative Auto Boutique in Oakland sold and installed auto accessories such as car stereos and wheels and offered custom auto paint jobs. Although the original alert call came in at about 7:15 p.m., fire crews on the scene did not declare a knock down – a term used to describe the moment when the main body of a large fire is suppressed – until 9:19 p.m, Huynh added.

“The only issue is that no one called it in until a few passers-by happened to see it and by the time we arrived on scene it was already 100 percent involved," Huynh said.

Surrounding business were not exposed to the fire and no injuries were reported, Huynh said. The State Fire Marshal's Office is investigating the cause of the fire.

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Contact Gabby Baquero at [email protected]