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By Jorge Casuso
June 19 -- A fire that sent a black billowing cloud
drifting for blocks over the Pico Neighborhood early Monday
night spurred the largest local deployment of fire personnel
since the 1994 Northridge Earthquake.
For more than four hours, two dozen fire companies totaling
some 150 personnel from the Santa Monica and Los Angeles fire
departments fought the blaze that started shortly after 7
p.m. in the storage area of a CD reproduction company at 1928
14th Street, according to fire officials.
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| The fire could be seen
for blocks. (Photos by David Kaplan) |
Although two search and rescue ambulances were deployed to
the scene, no one was in the building at the time of the fire,
officials said.
The cloud that slowly obscured the large sun shortly before
setting drew several hundred bystanders to the scene, many
of them capturing the dramatic images on digital cameras,
video and cell phones, as three news helicopters hovered overhead.
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| A large crowd gathered
at the coner of Pico and 14th Street. |
The intersection at Pico and 14th was cordoned off, backing
traffic for several blocks around Santa Monica College. Twenty
Santa Monica police officers were deployed to help control
the traffic.
“There was a lot of fire,” said Santa Monica
Fire Captain Scott Ziegert. “It’s a big building.”
The fire that gutted the 7,500-suare-foor structure was fueled
by thousands of petroleum-based CD cases stacked 25-feet high
in the storage room at the rear of the building, Zigert said.
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| Firefighter hooks up
hose to hydrant. |
The firefighters, he said, “held the fire to one structure,”
although surrounding buildings will have “serious smoke
damage.”
One Santa Monica firefighter twisted his knee and was taken
to a local hospital, Ziegert said. Despite the noxious clouds
spewing for hours, there were injuries reported due to smoke
inhalation.
Structural engineers must inspect the gutted structure before
investigators can enter to determine the cause of the blaze,
Ziegert said.
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