Olmito fire consumes DVD warehouse

Firefighters battled a warehouse fire for more than nine hours in Olmito on Thursday as Hurricane Dolly's gusts receded from the Valley.

A fire consuming a warehouse storing DVD's was called in to the fire department at 4:00 a.m. on Thursday and the Brownsville Fire Department responded to fight the blazes.

The metal frame of the building collapsed under the heat of the fire and then froze as firefighters doused the building in water.

Like a fire on Ash Street on Wednesday, the efforts of the firefighters were hindered by the soft ground and mud encircling the building, caused by Dolly's downpour.

"There's no water in the area, so we're using the water from the resaca," said Captain Abelardo Galvan, indicating the cresting resaca 100 feet from the flames. "In that sense, the hurricane actually might have helped us."

Rooms enclosed by large concrete blocks were especially difficult for firefighters to access. Black smoke from the burning discs continued to billow up next to a pastoral herd of cows that fed calmly, just feet from the flames.

Galvan said the fire was contained, but was uncertain how long it would take the 17 firefighters deployed to finally decimate it.