ST. LUCIE COUNTY, Fla. — Investigators have determined that an electrical malfunction sparked an early-morning fire at a Fort Pierce-area business.
Crews were called to St. Lucie Battery and Tire on Orange Avenue just before 5 a.m.
The two-alarm blaze took more than 50 firefighters about two hours to extinguish.
No one was hurt.
The fire was traced to an area where there were golf cart batteries and a charging station.
The fire chief said the biggest concern was the number of tires on the property.
"Basically, tires are just dried oil. Once they get started, it's extremely difficult to put out," St. Lucie County Fire District Chief Nate Spera said. "There was some stacks of tires there, and it took a while to knock them down, put them out, utulizing both aerial apparatus and foam."
There was damage to external office space but most of the inventory was spared.
The business was back up and running Wednesday.