00:01I'm on Bridge Road in Richmond, in Melbourne's inner east, about 3km from the CBD and about
00:0850 metres behind me is a tobacco shop that was set alight about half past 3 this morning.
00:14It took firefighters about an hour to get the blaze under control and we've heard from
00:21someone who was staying nearby on holiday from nearby Geelong.
00:25He was woken up to the flames that erupted from the building.
00:31I heard like sirens and kind of like a loud explosion, I don't know if it was an explosion
00:37and then I hear my mum and my sister out there and then I go, just get out of my
00:43bed, go look
00:44and there's flames everywhere and I was like oh god, I wonder what happened.
00:48And also pedestrians who have been coming up to the police cordon this morning and then
00:53being turned away.
00:56Other commuters, people trying to get to their morning exercise have just been really inconvenienced
01:01and frustrated by the closure of Bridge Road this morning which is a major road that people
01:07use to get around.
01:09Here's what Maddy had to say about the difficulty getting to her Pilates class.
01:14Can't get through, no, a bit of a surprise, wasn't sure what was going on but a bit scary,
01:20a bit hectic, there's going to be a few of us pottering around so yeah, a bit of a different
01:25morning.
01:26Thankfully no one has been injured, there was no one inside the tobacco shop when the blaze
01:32started.
01:33There were three people in an adjoining part of the building that were evacuated which would
01:38have been very frightening but thankfully no one injured here this morning.
01:42We've seen so many arson attacks over recent months in Melbourne.
01:48For a while in recent months we saw arson attacks on entertainment venues and police opened an
01:54investigation called Operation Eclipse and prior to that we've seen dozens of arson attacks
01:59in previous months on tobacco shops in Melbourne and that appears to be something very similar
02:07that's happened here this morning but we're yet to get more information from police.
02:12An arson chemist is coming this morning and investigators hopefully will be updating us soon.
02:18to get more information from police in Melbourne.
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