Fire in feed store result
of spontaneous combustion
April 29, 2015
By Peggy Kelly
Santa Paula News
The owner and police largely put out a fire in a local feed store and Santa Paula Fire finished the job Sunday evening, a blaze that was blamed on spontaneous combustion of bagged grain feed.
SPFD Captain Carlos Arana said the incident was reported about 10 p.m. at Santa Paula Hay & Grain, 212 N. 12th St.
When firefighters arrived on the scene they found the owner of the business and Santa Paula Police had largely extinguished the flames.
Arana said the cause of the fire was bags of feed that “self-combusted…the bags were burning and somebody reported it straight to the owners,” that live in Bardsdale.
The owners drove to the store without reporting the blaze to authorities but Santa Paula Police had reported seeing smoke and flames coming from the metal building and stopped at the scene.
“By the time we got there they pretty much had the fire out themselves,” said Arana, and the mutual aid called to the report of a “full structure fire” was cancelled when Santa Paula Firefighters arrived on scene.
Arana said “A bunch of birds” inside the building had been moved outdoors by the business owner.
Firefighters stayed on scene doing cleanup and ensuring the fire was completely out for about 25 minutes.
The fire, Arana added, could have been much worse: “They had a lot of stuff in that metal building, a lot of bagged feed but luckily there was no hay, so that was good. Once hay caught fire that would have been bad because it’s so dry,” and burns rapidly.
Damage to the contents of the building is estimated at about $1,000.
