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KFD: Morning fire at Knoxville College leaves behind heavy building damage

The Knoxville Fire Department is investigating what caused the fire in the back of campus.

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — The Knoxville Fire Department responded to a call for a building on fire at Knoxville College Saturday morning.

The fire was reported at 8:52 a.m.

Mark Wilbanks, assistant fire chief with KFD, said in a release that firefighters arrived to the scene just before 9 a.m. and found a building in the back of the largely unused property quickly filling with smoke.

The person who called 911 said several people were seen running from the area of the fire.

Firefighters were able to put the fire out by 9:03 a.m., less than 10 minutes from receiving the call.

Wilbanks said he suspected the fire was a "warming" fire, one set so that people could get warm. No one had been charged as of Monday.

Wilbanks says, due to the large amount of debris in the structure, firefighters had to go in and do "extensive overhaul."

The building now has heavy fire damage; no one was hurt.

Firefighters put out another fire at Knoxville College almost seven months ago, on July 19, 2022. They extinguished two trash fires, one outside the Martin Luther King Jr. dormitory and the other in the cafeteria space of the same building.

Just eight days before that in 2022, Knoxville Fire reported an increase in trespassing within Knoxville College campus buildings. 

Wilbanks said the department responds to around five calls about fires a year at the mostly-dormant college campus, and most of the time, it's because of trespassers bringing in different combustible materials.

Knoxville College is in the process of trying to reclaim accreditation as a historically Black college, after shutting its doors in 2015.

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