By Jessica Rush w/Plano Star

The Plano Fire Department re-routed cars along Plano Parkway this afternoon as they responded to a one-alarm fire at Xtreme Collision. No one was injured, but the consequences could have been much worse after the roof caught on fire over the business’s paint booth.

The weight of snow over the weekend caused leaks in the roof. Manager Larry Boettcher said a worker was on top of the building heating tar to make repairs. Because of the cold weather, the worker may have been using higher temperatures than normal to get the tar to melt, Boettcher said.

As the worker was patching the roof around an exhaust stack, the tar caught on fire and some fell inside the stack. Boettcher said the worker warned employees of the fire and grabbed a fire extinguisher to put out the flames.

Although the fire was mostly contained to the roof, Plano Fire Department Battalion Chief Mike Shafer said a dry chemical alarm system was activated inside the paint booth. The fire department treated the situation as a one-alarm fire, because smoke could be seen coming off the building.

The department arrived just after 1 p.m. with a fire truck, two engines, an ambulance and their utility truck, and sent firefighters inside the paint booth and on to the roof with an extension ladder to put out the fire with water.

“It was a small fire, but this is a normal response with a building this big,” Lt. Paul Paredez said. “Especially with something like this, you want to have more than you think you’ll need in case it goes south on you.”

Boettcher said there was not a lot of damage to the building, but they will have to replace the exhaust stack. They hope to get back to work soon on a parking lot full of wrecked vehicles from last week’s winter storm.

“We expected it to be a busy Monday, but we didn’t expect this,” Boettcher said.