DETROIT – Thick plumes of smoke rose over Wayne State University on Wednesday afternoon after a fire broke out on an upper floor of the Maccabees Building at Woodward and Warren.
Investigators say an air-handling unit on an 11th-floor exterior platform caught fire around 1 p.m.
Wayne State police, along with roughly 60 Detroit firefighters and medics, responded to the scene.
Everyone inside the high-rise, which houses faculty offices, was evacuated. Firefighters brought the fire under control and extinguished it. No injuries were reported.
Witness Earl Jackson described the scale of the smoke.
“It was mighty big. It was really big. It was so big that it couldn’t be from a smokestack or storm,” Jackson said.
Detroit Fire Department Community Relations Chief James Harris praised the speed of the response.
“The response was phenomenal. The men and women of the Detroit Fire Department did an awesome job. We got the call at approximately 1:01 today, the response time was under five minutes,” Harris said.
Wayne State University Police Chief Anthony Holt said the smooth evacuation reflected months of preparation.
“This is an excellent response and it shows the preparation that we do ahead of time — the fire evacuations and drills — everything just went like clockwork,” Holt said.