A two-alarm fire at the Williamsburg Shopping Center has destroyed a restaurant and damaged three other businesses.

Two train cars carrying used railroad ties caught fire in Richmond yesterday, prompting the engineer to disconnect the locomotive, authorities said. About 40 firefighters hurried to the scene just north of the intersection of Hermitage Road and West Leigh Street shortly before 3 p.m., dousing the flames as a cloud of smoke billowed. The 30-car train was traveling from the eastern portion of the city to the west, officials said, when the engineer looked back and saw flames. The two cars behind the locomotive, both carrying railroad ties, had caught fire.

Two train cars carrying used railroad ties caught fire in Richmond this afternoon, prompting the engineer to disconnect the locomotive, authorities said. About 40 firefighters hurried to the scene just north of the intersection of Hermitage Road and West Leigh Street shortly before 3 p.m., dousing the flames as a cloud of smoke billowed above.

A battery exploded in the basement of Richmond City Hall yesterday morning knocking out the city’s Web site and interrupting some city services yesterday. Lt. Shawn Jones of the city fire department said the small explosion was reported at 7:47 a.m. Jones said the firefighters were met at the scene by city employees and employees of a contractor that was performing work on city information technology equipment. There were no injuries, Jones said.

A homeless man has been charged with setting fire to six SUVs and trucks at a car dealership and neighboring business on Midlothian Turnpike in Chesterfield County. James G. Burns, 47, is accused of stuffing paper or cloth into the vehicles’ fuel tanks and setting them on fire Thursday about 6:30 a.m. The vehicles didn’t explode, and no one was injured.

Chesterfield County police are investigating the discovery of a body and, in an unrelated incident, a fire that gutted an office building. A decomposed body turned up in the Appomattox River near Petersburg yesterday about 2 p.m. Chesterfield police said the state medical examiner’s office will have to determine the identity and the cause of death.

Authorities charged a suspect with arson and attempted murder in a fire late Tuesday night on Whitcomb Street in Richmond’s East End. A Richmond Fire Department news release did not name the person who was arrested, and a fire spokesman didn’t have the name when reached last night. Officials say the fire was set in the 1900 block of Whitcomb Street in an occupied apartment building. Firefighters arrived and found heavy fire coming from the front and rear exterior stairways.

The Greater Richmond chapter of the American Red Cross is providing food and shelter to 41 Chesterfield County residents, including 28 children, who were displaced by an apartment fire Monday. The 41 residents of the Bermuda Run Apartments are staying through Thursday at a Chester-area hotel, “and we’re helping everybody with food,“ Red Cross spokesman Bill Harrison said.

A fire at a Chesterfield County apartment complex displaced about 45 residents yesterday evening. The Chesterfield County Fire Department received a report at 6:58 p.m. of a fire in the 2600 block of Mangowood Drive in the Bermuda Run Apartments. Heavy smoke was coming from the third-floor apartment when fire units arrived about 7:05 p.m., said fire Battalion Chief David Throckmorton, and firefighters met heavy fire when they entered the building.

Flames and smoke forced residents to flee an apartment building in Henrico County yesterday, with one man dropping a child safely into the arms of a firefighter from a second-story window. Firefighters were summoned about 3:15 p.m. to the burning building on Camero Court off Hanover Road, just north of East Nine Mile Road. The man who dropped the child to the firefighter also escaped through the window, hanging from a windowsill and dropping to the ground, where firefighters broke his fall, said Henrico fire Capt. Doug Reynolds. A woman also escaped through the window.

The American Red Cross is helping 16 Richmond residents forced out of their homes by fire or flooding in the past couple of days. Volunteers for the organization’s Greater Richmond Chapter are assisting 10 people displaced by a fire Wednesday night in two North Side apartments and six people affected by flooding in an apartment complex yesterday morning.

The American Red Cross is helping 16 Richmond residents displaced from their homes because of fire or flooding.

A small fire on the railroad tracks over Dock Street in Richmond was quickly extinguished by railroad employees about the same time that Richmond firefighters arrived on the scene.

Among items saved was a Grammy award and gold record for “Big Bad John.“ Lost in the blaze, however, were the singer’s signature boots and cowboy hats.

From its half-mile-long driveway to its stunning, panoramic view high above a broad section of the James River, country-music legend Jimmy Dean’s Chaffin’s Bluff home has a lot to offer. But both amenities proved a nightmare for dozens of Henrico County firefighters who worked well into yesterday morning to extinguish a fire that destroyed or severely damaged as much as 75 percent of Dean’s Varina-area home off Osborne Turnpike.