Baltimore City Firefighters Contain Two-Alarm Business Fire in St. Paul Neighborhood

Black smoke rose over Baltimore's St. Paul neighborhood Thursday evening after an exterior fire at a business on the 2200 block of Langley Street escalated into a two-alarm emergency, sending a plume visible as far away as downtown and Federal Hill.

Firefighters were dispatched just before 6:40 p.m. and arrived to find the blaze already spreading from the business toward an adjacent two-story home, Baltimore City Fire Department spokesperson Rashad Singletary said in an email. Crews contained the fire and, critically, kept it from reaching nearby railroad tracks that run close to the scene.

No one was injured, officials said.

The presence of propane materials and gasoline at the business complicated the response and pushed it into hazardous materials territory. Though the cause of the fire remains under investigation, officials confirmed both substances were involved, prompting a request for the Maryland Department of the Environment to respond to the scene.

The MDE request signals a response that extends beyond fire suppression. With propane and gasoline present, investigators will likely need to assess whether any fuel was released into the soil or storm drainage near the tracks, though no official findings had been released as of Thursday night.

The St. Paul neighborhood sits just south of Mount Vernon, and the scale of Thursday's smoke column underscored how quickly a localized commercial fire can ripple across the city's skyline. Residents watching from Federal Hill, across the Inner Harbor, reported seeing the dark smoke well before any official notifications went out.

The fire's origin as an exterior blaze at a business, rather than inside a structure, likely helped firefighters gain early access to the perimeter and limit spread. Still, the escalation to two alarms indicates the initial response required reinforcement to bring the situation under control before it could reach the railroad right-of-way.

The cause of the fire and the extent of damage to the business and the neighboring two-story home remain under investigation.