Parking garage at Jacksonville Airport partially collapses after car fire....

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Firefighters were unable to enter the hourly garage at Jacksonville International Airport after a multi-vehicle fire partially collapsed the structure on Friday, according to Jacksonville Fire and Rescue Department Chief Keith Powers.

During a news conference Friday evening, Powers said JFRD was using drones to inspect the structure to ensure nobody was in the garage at the time of the fire, which caused damage to about 50 cars.

“Those drones have not, as the mayor said, have not found anything yet. But we won’t know 100% until we can get in there and physically verify,” Powers said.

Powers said crews were able to put out most of the fire but added that there were some challenges in fully extinguishing it, as firefighters cannot enter the structure.

“They have got most of that fire knocked down, but obviously we have to be able to get inside of the vehicles, under the hood, inside the compartment space, to fully extinguish it,” Powers said.

Just after noon on Friday, JFRD crews began to battle the second-alarm fire at JAX, prompting officials to close the airport for five hours.

According to Powers, the fire started on the second floor.

“There was a partial collapse on the second and third floors, and then a secondary collapse about 30 minutes later,” Powers said.

According to Powers, the airport had an engineering team on scene assessing the next steps, and compared the incident to the parking garage collapse at Ascension St. Vincent’s Riverside in September 2023.

“This is going to be a long, long process, obviously similar to what we dealt with with the St. Vincent’s parking garage. It’s going to be a very similar scenario,” Powers said.

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