Four-alarm warehouse fire in south Houston

HOUSTON (FOX 26) - Fire fighters in southwest Houston are battling a four-alarm warehouse fire.

The call came in around 7:15 a.m. Monday morning about a fire on the 13000 block of Almeda Road.

"Early this morning, I kinda heard like a 'boom' and I opened my blind up to my room and all I saw was firetrucks," said Patrick Hunter who was later told to shelter in place. "Of course, my wife is pregnant so she wasn't coming outside anyway."

Houston Fire Department says the fire started at a recycling plant, and it's unknown what type of chemicals are burning.

National Container Group appears to be the company that operates out of the building that caught fire.

Hazmat was on the scene investigating the fire, which sent a large cloud of dark smoke in the sky that could be seen from miles away.

 "The smoke has dissipated and our crews are operating to ensure complete extinguishment of the area," said Houston Fire Chief Samuel Peña. "We did have one {firefighter} that was transported for heat exhaustion, at this point, and a second one that was transported with some sort of exposure."

Houston Fire Chief Samuel Peña ordered residents in a one-mile radius of the fire to shelter-in-place for a few hours, but it has since been lifted.

We don’t know what chemical fumes may have filled the air, but Bridgette Murray says residents deserve to know.

"It is our health and it's not only the health of my generation, but it's the health of the generation beyond me as well as behind me," said Murray who is the founder of Achieving Community Tasks Successfullly (ACTS).

Murray founded the nonprofit after she, too, had to shelter in place during a warehouse fire near her neighborhood in Pleasantville back in 1995.

"It actually burned for 3 weeks so we had monitors all along Market Street. We also were told to be in place for a short while," said Murray.

Since the 1995 warehouse fire near Pleasantville, the community has worked for safety at warehouses. Those efforts resulted in the City of Houston Executive Order number I-35 (Revised). This order requires the Fire Department and the Public Works and Engineering Department to inspect warehouses, provide neighborhoods with information on the materials stored at nearby warehouses, and ensure the safety of permitted warehouses.

The cause of this fire remains under investigation. No word, exactly, on what workers will be doing now that they’re workplace has been destroyed by a fire.