COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Fire turned to ice while firefighters fought a blaze on the city's near North Side Monday morning.
The three-alarm fire lit up the early morning sky and closed a few main roads.
NBC 4's Tom Brockman reported with the FAST FACTS.
The fire on North High Street and East Weber Road was called into Columbus fire around 4:30 a.m. The flames were seen for miles.
"Yeah, it's a blaze. There's a ton of smoke pouring … It's a two-story big fire," the 911 caller said.
The fire was contained close to 5:40 a.m., according to officials. It took dozens of fire crews, though.
Officials said the building was a four-story condominium complex that was under construction.
"The Downtown company saw it coming up from Downtown. So, yeah, it was pretty impressive when we got here. You can see all them telephone poles are burnt. We just had everything burning around us," Battalion Chief Mark Devine said.
The third and fourth floors collapsed while firefighters were working.
Fire crews had to battle the elements in addition to the flames. With temperatures near 0 degrees, the water used to douse the flames quickly became ice.
Devine said a lot of the firefighters were falling on the ice.
Several other businesses were damaged by the flames, too.
North High Street's southbound lanes reopened close to 7:30 a.m. Northbound lanes opened close to noon.
No one was hurt in the fire or on the ice, officials said.
While a cause hasn't been determined, construction workers said heaters weren't being used in the building but lights were.
"You don't know if some homeless people got in there. With as cold as it was, they're going to hunker down anywhere they can hunker down," Devine said.
Fire officials said they probably will not make it inside to investigate the fire Monday in part because the water and ice and also the structural integrity of the building.
Stay with NBC 4 and refresh nbc4i.com for the latest information in this developing story.
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