TOLEDO, Ohio — Firefighters spent Sunday afternoon and into the evening battling a huge fire in north Toledo at the former home of an iconic Toledo business.

The fire broke out around 4 p.m. near the intersection of Lagrange Street and Palmer Street at the former Mohr Brothers bottling building.

It’s unknown at this time if the building was occupied. 

A neighboring house also caught on fire.

According to Private Sheldon Collins with the Toledo Fire Department, in the heat of the day, crews were mainly working to make sure the fire didn’t spread.

Temperatures were close to 90° as firefighters in full gear battled the blaze. 

“When I first got up here, you could feel the heat from the fire coming off. It was wild,” said bystander Austin Smith.

People in homes close to the fire were told to evacuate their homes as heavy smoke blanketed the neighborhood. 

Jonah Schell, who just moved to Toledo from North Carolina, a few weeks ago was sleeping when the fire broke out. 

“We’d just gotten back from the lake, and I was taking a nap, and I heard, like, loud knocking on the door, and they were like, ‘we’re evacuating, we’re evacuating,'” said Schell.

The fire could be seen all across the metro area. Robert Pawlowski, who lives in Michigan, was in west Toledo when he saw the large plume of black smoke to the east. 

“As you’re sitting at Franklin Park Mall, here’s the fire. You could actually see it. The flames were so big. As you’re getting closer to it on 475, it keeps on progressing,” said Pawlowski.

Firefighters also worked to put out a fire near the wires on an electric power pole. First Energy says up to 100 customers in the area were without power well into the evening.

Collins says as of about 6 p.m., no one was discovered to have been injured in the fire. 

It’s still unclear how the fire started. 

Mohr Brothers was a local soft drink maker that bottled their drinks in the building on LaGrange St. and Palmer from 1904 until it was closed in 1992.