LAST UPDATE: Fire Photos

Information below by City Editor Graham Cawthon. See his blog here: http://gcawthonstar.blogspot.com/ Also check http://www.shelbystar.com/ for more info.
Neighbors stood outside and watched as two, possibly three, mobile homes became engulfed in thick, ash-filled white smoke following a fire Thursday afternoon. Ashley Murray, who lives nearby the mobile homes on Gaffney Road, south of the Broad River Greenway, said she had just returned home from work when she saw the flames. Firefighters were called to the sparsely populated mobile home park around 4:30 p.m. In all, about a dozen emergency vehicles responded from the Boiling Springs Rural and Shanghai volunteer departments as well as the Grassy Pond volunteer department from just across the South Carolina border. Initial reports indicated no one was inside the homes at the time of the fire. Thick bushes blocked the damaged homes from the rest of the mobile home park. Christopher Speicher, 15, said he was nearby playing basketball with friends when he heard a loud boom. He said he then called 911. “I think there’s another one back there,” Speicher said of the homes damaged. “I think there’s three.” Speicher, who lives close to the homes damaged Thursday, said he didn’t know the people who lived there and rarely saw them. Firefighters at the scene were unavailable for comment. Attempts to contact the Boiling Springs Rural Fire Department - which led the investigation - were not successful Thursday.

Please check http://www.shelbystar.com/ for updates on this story.