04:44 PM EDT on Friday, April 16, 2004

By WILL JONES / WCNC.com

An electrical problem caused the fire that broke out in the basement of One Wachovia Center in Uptown Friday morning, according to investigators.

6NEWS Firefighters responded to the scene around 7 a.m. Friday.

Firefighters responded to the building at 301 South College around 7 a.m.

Employees stood outside the building and had their morning coffee as Charlotte firefighters worked to contain a fire in the telephone switching room in the basement of the bank building.

"There was an electrical problem in there and it caused a fire,” said Captain Jim Dedmon, Charlotte Fire Department. “As a result, all the insulation, because it does emit a tremendous amount of smoke when it burns, caused a smoke situation."

The smoke spread up into the high-rise to the eighth floor. Alarms were sounded on all eight floors, but not the remaining 34.

David Pitser of Childress Klein Properties, the manager of the property, said state building code mandates that all floors have fire alarms and suppression equipment.

As per state building code, all floors have fire alarms and fire suppression equipment. And, following the building's fire plan, which is a common fire protocol used by fire and rescue, if there's an emergency in a high-rise, alarms automatically go off on the affected floor and the two floors above and below. The smoke spread up to the sixth floor. That triggered alarms all the way up to eight.

Fire officials said they evacuated the first eight floors. Some employees said it felt like a fire drill.

"Last Friday, I think, Two Wachovia had a fire drill too. So, maybe it's Friday. They said several people had been in the building and they made them leave again. They said that they could smell smoke," said Bonnie Kemler, employee.

It took firefighters about 30 minutes to control the fire. Firefighters spent most of the morning venting the smoke and nasty smell out of the building. People were allowed back inside a few hours later.