Firefighters battle two-alarm fire in parking garage in downtown Houston

HOUSTON (KTRK) -- Houston firefighters spent Tuesday afternoon battling a two-alarm fire in a downtown Houston parking garage, as flames shot from the building constructed of stone, glass and steel.

At about 3:30pm they were called to 601 Travis. When the first HFD unit arrived, they spotted flames coming from the third floor of the parking garage, with several vehicles on fire, and they called for extra crews.

"What I was thinking about was 911, which isn't a good thing but it reminds me of something like that," said downtown worker Matthew Chitty, who witnessed the whole thing. "You never know what can happen in a short amount of time."

The fire was confined to three cars on the third story of a parking garage, but there are offices and a restaurant in the location as well. People were inside at the time.

HFD spokesman Ruy Lozano said, "What we were worried about were occupants, so we cleared every room, every floor, floor by floor."

The building was safely evacuated, the fire extinguished and an investigation underway into whether it involved one car with an electrical problem that spread or something else.