1 person injured in large warehouse fire in Forest Park, officials say

ATLANTA - Forest Park and Emergency Services responded to an active fire around 9 a.m. Tuesday in the 4600 block of Lake Mirror Place, which is a warehouse area not far from Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. 

Fire crews spent hours battling the fierce flames shooting up from a warehouse. It is home to La Fortuna, a kitchen supplier for restaurants.

"It was quite a shock to see the amount of smoke coming out of it and then followed by the flames and I thought maybe it was a small fire, but it turned out to be fully engulfed," said Buddy Linton, co-owner Tara Plastics.

Linton co-owns a plastics packaging manufacturing plant across from the firefight and watched for hours as crews worked to put it out. 

"It was tremendous because the entire building was fully engulfed by the time we looked at it, and it couldn't have been any more than 5 minutes or so from when it started," he said.

Firefighters say people were working in the warehouse when the fire sparked. They say everyone got out, but one person had to be rescued. He was rushed to Grady Memorial Hospital after breathing in too much smoke. 

"Our primary focus whenever we have somebody trapped is to get that person out. Once that person was removed because of the heavy flame involvement that we had, we did go into a defensive operation," said Capt. Ian Hogan with the Forest Park Fire Department.

About 50 firefighters were on scene from Forest Park, Clayton County and Morrow.

While they worked on the fire, part of the building’s roof collapsed.

Power was cut off to the area, which meant Linton’s business and others were forced to close. 

"We're hoping to get back up today," he said.

Besides the minor smoke inhalation injury, everyone else is okay, and it does not appear the fire spread to other businesses nearby. 

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