A blaze to dangerous to fight took out one of Detroit’s abandoned auto plans
Thick black smoke filled the Detroit skyline last night as part of the old Packard auto plant burned. The site is something of a symbol of the Detroit auto industry’s decline. So it was perhaps fitting that firefighters
concluded the blaze was too dangerous to fight, and that there was nothing they could do but let it burn. The mostly abandoned plant covers 3.5 million square feet and is made up of 43 buildings with tunnels and open
sewers. It is popular with scavengers and trespassing explorers. In 2007, the city’s fire department warned about the dangers of the plant and had crews tour it in anticipation of a future fire. It concluded that roads
within the plant could collapse under the weight of some fire trucks. By Tuesday morning, the fire was still smoldering.