Up In Flames? Amarillo Fire Responds To Call At Westgate Mall

Malls in America have been a slowly dying breed. Some of them have managed to stay standing and still have a strong attendance inside them, some have been completely shut down and razed to the ground.

Westgate Mall here in Amarillo, TX. is one of the ones that has managed to weather the storm, even if people joke about the mall all the time. Sure, there are some empty storefronts inside and not everything has survived, but yesterday there was a scare that nothing was going to survive.

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The Amarillo Fire Department received a call about a possible structure fire at the mall, and it had a lot of us thinking this was the beginning of the end for it.

Bracing themselves for the beginning of the end to the mall, or at least a part of it, the fire department responded to the call. As they arrived on scene, they got into battle mode...only to find out that battle mode didn't need to be activated.

After surveying the area, the good news was revealed. It was simply a fire sprinkler that had gone off to what appears to be a malfunction.

Phew, Westgate Mall survives thanks to a fusible plug that was broken and triggered the sprinkler. No smoke damage, no fire, just a little water damage to some electrical equipment that was near the sprinkler that went off.

Big shoutout to AFD for responding so quickly to the scare. We would've hated to see a part of Amarillo lore go down in that manner.