DAYTON — Hundreds of people were forced out of a Montgomery County office building in downtown Dayton Wednesday.
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As reported on News Center 7 at 5, Just before 1 p.m. Dayton police and fire were called to the 100 block of South Main Street for reports of smoke and flames, according to Montgomery County Regional Dispatch.
Jenica McGee was just getting back to work after her lunch break at the Reibold Building.
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That’s when she said things got hectic in a hurry.
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“We just heard a really loud boom. We had power cut off some of our computers, and then maybe 15 minutes later, they asked us to leave the building and the fire alarm was going off,” McGee said.
Nancy Vanover also works in the building.
She said they couldn’t tell where the explosion came from, but it was loud.
“We were at our desk, heard an explosion — pretty loud explosion that knocked our telephones out,” Vanover said. “And then one our guys went over and looked out the window and they said ‘there’s smoke coming out’ and then they set off the fire alarms.”
McGee shared what she saw and smelled in the stairwells during the evacuation.
“There was a lot of people coming down. It smelled a little bit ashy, almost like smoke,” She said.
Video shows smoke rising from grates on the sidewalk next to the Dayton Convention Center.
A construction worker sent a video showing flames and smoke coming from another sidewalk grate.
A Montgomery County spokesman said an electrical vault under Main Street caught fire.
That sent smoke into the Reibold Building, prompting an evacuation order from Dayton fire.
AES Ohio crews were on scene helping isolate the outage.
Workers were given the all-clear return to the building on Thursday.
We will continue to follow this story.
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