fire

BREMEN — A fire inside a warehouse facility here early Tuesday morning damaged several vehicles but fortunately caused no injuries.

Bremen and Dodge City firefighters responded to a call at Zero RPM’s research and development facility at 5380 Alabama Highway 69 South about 5:45 a.m. and found smoke pouring from the building, according to emergency dispatch reports. The fire apparently started inside a sprinter-style van, filling the building with smoke and causing heat damage to nearby vehicles, Dodge City Assistant Fire Chief Trey Doyle said.

“The fire put itself out because it ran out of oxygen,” he said. “It melted some of the buckets on the trucks parked nearby the van.”

Firefighters investigated the cause of the fire, but it’s still unclear what started it, Doyle said. Crews cleared the scene by 9 a.m.

Attempts to reach Zero RPM employees for comment Tuesday afternoon were not successful by press time. The company is headquartered on Cherokee Avenue Southwest in Cullman and specializes in increasing fuel efficiency and reducing vehicle emissions, according to it website.

Founded in 2012 with the help of Gov. Robert Bentley and Wallace State Community College’s Business Incubator program, ZeroRPM has since filed patents covering nine new inventions and begun exporting environmentally sound products nationwide.