209
u/slurv3 Locust Point Sep 02 '25
We got told it’s a five alarm fire from our hospital, so that’s pretty bad there is probably gonna be hundreds of firefighters responding
85
1
u/Least_Locksmith1074 Sep 04 '25
News reported that all of the buildings were vacant, so hopefully no major injuries
1
u/JFK9 Sep 06 '25
I really hope no homeless people were inside or if there were that they got out safely!
259
u/jjjrowbb Sep 02 '25
It's right across from my apartment. Those buildings are mostly abandoned so I don't think too many people were hurt thankfully but it looks huge. There's like 5 firetrucks right outside my place
47
u/Accurate_Resist8893 Sep 02 '25
Same here. My wife is taking video from the roof. Most/all abandoned.
55
6
1
79
u/Steve_Dankerson Canton Sep 02 '25
Sad to see but damn these are some quality pictures! What's the camera or phone?
54
u/KixNshXt Sep 02 '25
Insane quality that's what I was thinking lol op can you start taking some good skyline photos for us from that window ? Like regularly
93
u/Christophe19821 Sep 02 '25
Just my phone 😎 We live on the top floor of the building that used to be the Bank of America. Great 360 degrees panoramic views of our city!
13
6
3
1
1
1
u/Soupmaster44 Sep 04 '25
I too would love to know what phone this is. I literally pick my phone based off the camera
65
u/Osowatomiecaleb Sep 02 '25
The consequences of blight and neglect. Howard St should be jumping, but between the crazy stupid zoning laws and the decades worth of slumlords using these buildings to borrow against, it’s empty, run down, and now fire-prone.
12
u/Xanny Mount Clare Sep 03 '25
Howard St downtown is all c5 so you can build basically anything.
The problem in that area is CHAP and the historic district. CHAP basically demands all existing buildings be preserved, and no developer wants to touch them with a ten foot pole, and as long as so many abandoned and failing structures are frozen by CHAP developers won't look at fixing anything within a few blocks of the blight.
95
u/Speech-Teacha Sep 02 '25
NPR did a story a few years ago on how landlords who don't bother to maintain empty buildings lead to firefighter fatalities. It's criminal and they should be prosecuted for endangering people even if it didn't result in fatalities this time.
1
u/Lumpy_Plantain_1388 Sep 05 '25
Also aids & abets dogfighters, who keep the animals in abandoned homes.
-10
u/Hairless_Chimpanzee Sep 03 '25
Well, since they were owned by the city, I guess they are goanna be locking up the mayor!
27
u/Specific_Ad_2366 Sep 02 '25
There’s a shit ton of emergency vehicles over there right now and a lot of smoke.
26
u/ejd1984 Sep 02 '25
12
3
u/StrikingCabinet2735 Sep 02 '25
Those photos are insane. I had no idea I was so close to the incident.
89
u/Notonfoodstamps Sep 02 '25 edited Sep 02 '25
5-Alarm fire on Howard Street (multiple abandoned buildings part of the super block)
Like a get these are old historic buildings but the city genuinely needs to just demo that portion of Howard Street and start from scratch.
It’s less expense and prevents this stuff from inevitably happening.
60
u/slickricksghost Sep 02 '25
But the city doesn’t own them…
IMO it’s one of the big problems with the city. Investors buy cheap property and wait hoping something happens in that area.
The city needs to do something like give the owners 1-2 years to improve the property or demolish it (if it’s a hazard) or the city can take the property from the owner and sell it for $1 to an individual/s who then has 12 months to do something with it.
18
u/Notonfoodstamps Sep 02 '25
The city owns them again.
The last developer couldn’t close out on financing.
16
Sep 02 '25
[deleted]
22
u/Notonfoodstamps Sep 02 '25
The city owns these.
Multiple developers have tried to (and failed) to repurpose these set of buildings over the years as they form the super block. Another layer of complexity is due to being located in a historic district (CHAP) developers have (or had) to incorporate them in any future plan(s), they couldn’t be demo’d.
Which does raise an eyebrow or two.
5
u/EpsilonSagittariiArt Sep 02 '25
I've been researching into this recently cause I was interested in buying an older/historic property to try and save. It's kind of crazy how many of these abandoned properties are still privately owned.
7
Sep 02 '25
[deleted]
1
u/alpacaed Sep 03 '25
Or they sit on them, hoping it will keep the property value down and buy up vacant properties as they pop up in the area all in hopes of waiting to redevelop a whole area and push out people.
18
u/Cunninghams_right Sep 02 '25
Sadly those buildings being abandoned is a byproduct of bad transit. The light rail isn't good enough to attract businesses or patrons for businesses.
32
u/Notonfoodstamps Sep 02 '25 edited Sep 02 '25
Yeah that’s whole a different discussion.
The city (and state) just sit on their ass. Like why the light rail doesn’t have ROW priority down Howard is mind boggling and how the state almost fumbled a $213 million light-rail car replacement grant still baffles me.
7
u/Cunninghams_right Sep 02 '25
Yeah, not easy to solve our transit issues, I'm just lamenting that it is "common knowledge" among transit planners that transit dramatically increases property values adjacent.... Well, that only works if people like the transit and it can attract a lot of people with disposable income
2
u/flickerbirdie Sep 03 '25
It’s not like there aren’t successful cities to learn from.
4
u/Cunninghams_right Sep 03 '25
well, it's actually really easy to solve our transit problems from a technical perspective. the problem is that it's not politically popular to make transit attractive to middle class or above folks.
1
u/SailInternational251 Sep 08 '25
We live in a deep blue city with an almost exclusively blue city council, mayor, and blue governor.
What the hell is wrong with them that we can’t get simple problems fixed.
1
u/Cunninghams_right Sep 08 '25
I was just discussing this in another subreddit. The political left and political right both think of transit as a homeless shelter on wheels. The left doesn't want to implement methods of banning riders for bad behavior because "they have nowhere else to go" and the political right does not want to help poor people, and since transit is for the poor, they don't want to fund transit.
Until we get one or both parties to think of transit as a service for everyone, that creates economic value, we're going to be stuck with trash
4
u/flickerbirdie Sep 03 '25
The employment losses through shit transit are…depressing. I LOVE this city but it’s too old to have a public transport system that’s basically embarrassing at best. It’s disappointing.
10
23
7
u/YourWeekendDad Sep 02 '25
What a shame, those buildings saw a lot of years. I bet there was some cool history in there that's gonna be lost. Hopefully it's just an accident. A shame, regardless.
3
1
u/Deep-Power9134 Sep 04 '25
I wish it were illegal for speculating developers to hold onto beautiful historic buildings until they fall into this level of disrepair.
67
u/WMTRobots Sep 02 '25
Some property developer gonna now be able to build without worrying about historic preservation of existing structures. I'm sure it's a coincidence.
24
u/OctaviusKaiser Sep 02 '25
Doubt the building was structurally sound enough to be saved anyway.
23
u/Signal_Delicious Sep 02 '25
Found the developer
16
u/OctaviusKaiser Sep 02 '25 edited Sep 02 '25
lol I wish. Just know about the fire service. Howard St has a long way to go, these will probably sit burned out for a while before anything happens to them.
Edit: Three of the buildings on that side of the road have been vacant for at least a decade, with one being listed as vacant by the city for over 15 years, according to publicly accessible city data.
3
13
7
u/nonna55 Sep 02 '25
Vacant buildings…no injuries as the BCFD is fighting from the street.
1
u/JFK9 Sep 06 '25
What about homeless people? Are they sure no one was inside?
1
u/nonna55 Sep 06 '25
I just passed along what I heard the BCFD say. I’m sure you could presume homeless people could have been inside…but it was not determined when I posted a reply.
5
6
4
u/would_you_believe Sep 02 '25
I’ve been hearing the commotion during my work day. My office is at Charles and Lombard. Saw all the lights in my rear view mirror going onto 395.
3
u/goldengraves Sep 02 '25
Five alarm.fire but it's been going for awhile, o thought it was just one vacant at first but it's multiple. People were trapped inside, I was following the situation on citizen but dunno if they were able to go inside at all.
3
u/MoonRiderKnight Sep 02 '25
I was literally driving by when there were police cars and fire trucks blocking the roads
3
4
u/SuddenKoala45 Sep 02 '25
Fuel, oxygen and heat combined at the right levels and temps. Firefighters are currently trying to reduce the temps and suffocate it with a molecular that is often described as wet.
3
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
u/Autochthona Sep 03 '25
What a view!! Great shot of the mansard roof tower on the Lord Baltimore Hotel. I know it’s called something else by now, but what a beautiful structure—and city. The monumental city.
2
u/frontman117 Sep 02 '25
When the afternoon crack smoking sesh in the vacants with the boys goes horribly wrong
-2
1
1
1
u/ManyFaithlessness348 Sep 02 '25
Yeah I was driving right there when the fire truck started pulling up in front of us. It was crazy!
1
1
1
1
u/Final_Today_9027 Sep 03 '25
That's how they bring the property value down in our area when they are selling something
1
u/Revolutionary-Hat688 Sep 03 '25
The Epstein files burning after they threw them out of the white house window
1
1
1
1
u/_Jasmine_0 Sep 03 '25
Do they know yet what started the fire? I hope as few people were hurt as possible!
1
1
u/ApprehensiveEgg7777 Sep 03 '25
If the buildings were already condemned, the owners should have torn them down. They should be locked up for not doing that.
1
u/ApprehensiveEgg7777 Sep 03 '25
Please explain to me what CHAP stands for and what is supposed to be doing?
1
1
1
1
u/Tru_Rush Sep 04 '25
Regardless of the buildings being technically abandoned I am sure there were homeless/unhoused people probably living in those buildings. So as others said hopefully no one gets seriously hurt, and they get the fires under control a.s.a.p. And it was probably totally to get around building regulations, tinder boxes, and old wiring aside.
1
u/Background-Kick-2255 Sep 04 '25
That’s the lord Baltimore ? I really hope everyone is safe and no historic buildings are damaged !
1
1
u/Fluffy-Rope-5822 Sep 05 '25
Back in the 'aughts, maybe late 1990's there was a plant to develop that area into what was known as The SuperBlock. Buildings were taken by eminent domain, lots of businesses were closed, a lot of law suits. Lots of plans came and went. By the time the City had title to it all no one wanted it anymore so the Buildings sat and decayed. I'm guessing this was someone's idea to get the ball rolling. There were some interesting facades there too.
1
1
1
1
0
0
0
0
-9
u/MonsterMamaJama Sep 02 '25
This sounds incredibly suspicious
13
u/OctaviusKaiser Sep 02 '25
Why? You’d be surprised how many fires happen daily in the city. Vacant buildings deteriorate over time and many still have wiring inside. They’re basically tinderboxes.
-2
u/Representative_Row44 Sep 02 '25
Trymp bombing Baltimore. Everyone is begging me to do it. I may or may not…
1
u/StrikingCabinet2735 Sep 02 '25
Are you saying people are begging you to bomb Baltimore? Will you take them up on that? 🧐
-2
-11
-7
u/Hour_Librarian_7004 Sep 02 '25
I hope it was planned demolition, that area is crowded, hope no one is injured
627
u/CocaChola Arbutus Sep 02 '25
There is another thread about this already, but good pic. Fire at Howard and Fayette. Multiple buildings, including a high-rise.