HUNTINGTON, W.Va.— After a fire broke out in an abandoned building in Huntington overnight, Mayor Patrick Farrell said in a tweet that something needed to be done about the city’s homeless and drug problems.

The fire broke out around 1:55 a.m. Tuesday morning in the 2700 block of 5th Avenue, where crews had to battle freezing temperatures, snow and ice to contain the fire.

Farrell says they currently have little information about what actually happened because the fire investigation is ongoing.

“What we know is that people lived in the building or at least slept in it overnight,” he said. “Our firefighters received a call and responded. The police had to come, the public works people, our emergency services people came to make sure we put the fire out and try to protect everyone who was in there, who we knew were in danger.”

He said they didn’t know exactly who the people sleeping in the building were or what exactly happened.

While he said they know there is a homeless problem in the city and he understands they want to stay warm, this puts all firefighters at risk, especially in cold weather.

“People want to stay warm, so it’s safe to assume that people broke into the building and were sleeping and then it caught fire,” Farrell said. “And while I understand the human condition is to stay warm and survive, when we have people trespassing, when we have arson, that endangers the people who lived there and the people who responded to it .”

In his inaugural speech last week, he mentioned that he would launch a pilot program to address veteran homelessness.

“We will start identifying people by name and not just treating them as numbers. We will help identify what is causing them to experience this bout of homelessness and help them get back into stable housing. “We’re going to start with that and try to get veteran homelessness down to zero to see what we learn and what we can do more effectively as a community,” Farrell said.

He said there are a lot of people working on the homeless issue right now, the problem is that the different people or departments are not working together to solve the problem.

“We’re not working effectively to share information in a way that we have a truly coordinated access system, a real way to ensure that the people who touch one part of the system and see another part,” Farrell said. “So it’s about working together and sharing information in a way that combats the problem more effectively.”

One of the other things he mentions is the toxic cycle between the homeless problem and the drug problems.

He says the city needs to work with different departments to combat the drug problem.

“The supply side of the drug epidemic must be stopped. We must work better with our federal and state partners and our local law enforcement agencies to combat this problem and curb the drug supply,” said Farrell.

And while this fire was just one that Huntington firefighters had to contend with due to increased weather conditions, Farrell suspects there could be more before the winter storm passes.

“There is no question that the cold weather will primarily drive more people to seek shelter and refuge,” he said. “There will be more fires, I expect there could be more in the coming days as this winter storm is still upon us.”

There are a few warming centers in Huntington that people can also visit, including Harmony House and the City Mission.

Farrell said that capacity in these places is not the issue, but that what matters is getting the word out to those who need it.

“I think the challenge is getting the message out to everyone properly because because of the City Mission rules, people haven’t always felt welcome to go there and so we need to make sure that people here know that they can go there can go,” he said.

He hopes the veteran homelessness program and all other programs to address these issues will be available as soon as possible.

“We work on it every day. We have worked on this every day since I took office,” said Farrell.