Early this morning, a fire ripped through an office building that houses the offices of Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

The roof of the building collapsed and there’s been heavy damage to the structure, but fortunately, there were no injuries. It happened just before 2 a.m.

BG Fire crews still on scene at a structure fire on State Street. The building housed Sen. Rand Paul’s Bg office. Traffic is being detoured. Cause unknown as of 8:30 this morning. More to come. pic.twitter.com/6CoTdgBxH5

— Will Whaley (@Will_Whaley_) July 21, 2023

Friday’s sunrise had to compete with the plume of gray smoke spewing out the top of the structure, home to Paul’s office, the law office of Kerrick Bachert and custom shirt printing store Dezign Tees.

Several large tree limbs in front of Paul’s office had to be cut down so a hose could reach through the second floor windows. Firefighters manned the aerials of trucks 1 and 6 to get at the flames from above.

According to McKee, nine units responded to the scene – a total of 31 personnel, not including two deputy chiefs and Bowling Green Fire Chief Justin Brooks.

Sen. Rand Paul’s office was not the only building impacted, the fire impacted multiple neighboring commercial businesses in downtown Bowling Green.

A public information officer for the Bowling Green Fire Department, says no injuries have been reported. pic.twitter.com/VYh02Ew1q8

— TexasLindsay™ (@TexasLindsay_) July 21, 2023

Several large tree limbs in front of Sen. Rand Paul’s office had to be cut so a hose could reach the 2nd floor windows. Six units worked to extinguish the flames, with firefighters manning the aerials of trucks 1 and 6 to get at the fire from above. (Bowling Green Daily) pic.twitter.com/80t9ChetHN

— TexasLindsay™ (@TexasLindsay_) July 21, 2023

Paul thanked the firefighters.

“We are thankful for the Bowling Green first responders who arrived quickly to the scene to put out the fire, and are continuing to work with authorities to assess damages and to determine a cause,” Paul wrote when asked for comment. “We have a very well established emergency management plan and have the ability to continue operations that will not impact our work helping Kentuckians.”

The fire is now under investigation by the Bowling Green Fire Department.

Many on social media wished him well and some noted this happened to occur a couple of days after Paul made another referral to the Department of Justice regarding Dr. Anthony Fauci for lying to Congress when he denied the NIH was funding gain-of-function research in Wuhan.

I’ve referred Anthony Fauci to the DOJ (again) for lying to Congress when he denied the NIH was funding gain-of-function research in Wuhan. Read more here: https://t.co/FgAo9cKbgF pic.twitter.com/BKL4XTNePT

— Senator Rand Paul (@SenRandPaul) July 18, 2023

Paul had made a similar referral two years ago, but as we’ve seen, that doesn’t seem to have produced any results. As we noted at that time:

As RedState’s Scott Hounsell was the first to note, it sure seems like Dr. Anthony Fauci lied to Congress when he claimed in a Senate hearing in May 2021 that the US wasn’t funding gain-of-function research on coronaviruses in China. We documented that NIH/NIAID grant funding was used to conduct gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology through awards granted by PREDICT and EcoHealth Alliance, and also through collaborative research projects undertaken by Dr. Ralph Baric at UNC-Chapel Hill and Dr. Shi Zhengli at Wuhan.

The cause of the fire is unclear at this point, and it isn’t clear yet where in the building the fire started. We also don’t know yet if the fire had any relation to Paul’s office.

Paul, unfortunately, has been in a lot of circumstances where he was targeted in the past. He was attacked by a neighbor, he was threatened by another man, and he was shot at during the attack on the GOP practice for the Congressional baseball game.

This is a developing story. RedState will provide any pertinent updates as they become available.