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A major fire broke out late Thursday at the Roswell Air Center, just south of the legendary Hangar 84, a site long tied to the infamous 1947 UFO crash.
Fire crews rushed to the scene after the blaze was reported around 7:55pm local time on East Earl Cummings Loop.
Authorities initially feared the fire could trigger a dangerous explosion due to hazardous materials and oxygen bottles stored nearby, prompting an expanded safety perimeter and rapid evacuation of nearby facilities.
Roswell firefighters worked quickly to contain the flames, declaring the fire under control by 9:45pm Thursday. What caused the fire is currently unknown.
At this time, no injuries have been reported, and officials have not confirmed the cause of the fire or whether any historically significant objects were affected.
The incident has already sparked speculation among UFO enthusiasts, who have long linked Hangar 84 to alien lore and the mysterious 1947 Roswell crash.
As investigators comb the site for answers, the fire raises fresh questions about what secrets might still be hidden at the heart of this legendary location.
As news of the fire spread, the internet erupted with theories about the mysterious event.
On Reddit, one user posted: 'They are destroying the evidence.' Another shared: 'Chances are they were storing alien bodies in this hangar for over 80 years, but then when a documentary came out, they were like 'alright boys, they all know now. Time to light it up and skedaddle.''
One person shared on X: 'Well, isn't that super interesting and an oddly timed 'coincidence'.. that right as the public starts getting all curious about our past… weird fire breaks out for no reason right next to Hangar 84.'
Authorities have yet to share more updates about Thursday's fire.
The Roswell incident captured imaginations worldwide when the US Air Force issued a press release stating that it had recovered debris from a 'flying disc.'
In July 1947, a rancher reported pieces of debris scattered over his land.
Authorities were called to the scene and, after investigating the wreckage, determined the pieces were from a flying saucer.
The local paper's front page story reported that the Roswell Army Field recovered a flying saucer on a New Mexico Ranch after metallic-looking, light but strong material was scattered across the land.
Major Jesse Marcel, who recovered debris from the crash, described the scene as 'a large area heavily scattered with metallic debris from a single impact point that scarred the earth.'
'The intelligence office of the 509th Bombardment Group at Roswell Army Air Field announced at noon today that the field has come into the possession of a Flying Saucer,' read Marcel's statement in the Roswell Daily Record on July 8, 1947.
He also said that the material spread out from this point into a triangular-shaped area 200 to 300 feet wide at the end of the field, and 3/4 of a mile long.
But less than 24 hours later, military officials reversed course, announcing that the debris had only come from a crashed weather balloon, sparking America's fascination with UFOs and allegations of a government cover-up ever since.
The US Air Force stated the weather balloon was part of Project Mogul's airborne system invented by Columbia University, New York University and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
It was designed to search the atmosphere for weak reverberations from nuclear-test blasts.
Project Mogul was a top-secret US military program from 1947 to 1949 that used high-altitude balloons equipped with microphones to detect sound waves from Soviet atomic bomb tests.
A 1994 military investigation concluded that the debris found at the Roswell site was likely pieces of a high-altitude balloon from Project Mogul, not an extraterrestrial spacecraft.