The Victoria Fire Department is praising Victoria police officers for spotting a fire early Thursday before it could spread and destroy a building.
Officers were on patrol about 2 a.m. when they saw signs of a fire in a business complex on Princess Avenue, between Government and Douglas streets.
Steve Serbic, the fire department’s deputy chief of operations, said smoke had reached the roof level of one of the businesses by the time fire crews arrived.
“[Firefighters] forced entry into the building and found the fire,” he said. “They extinguished it and did a search of the building and there was nobody inside.”
In a Facebook post, the fire department said the report came just in time. “Given the matter of a few more minutes, the racks of highly flammable contents would have caught fire and potentially destroyed the building,” the post said.
Serbic said it was fortunate police were in the area at the right time.
“It made a big difference in this case,” he said. “It’s those middle-of-the-night fires that sometimes don’t get reported as soon as they could be.”
The cause of the fire is still under investigation.
