Fire At California CubeSmart Facility Damages 70+ Units

A fire broke out at a Citrus Heights, California CubeSmart storage facility late Tuesday night. The Sacramento Metropolitan Fire Department estimates that more than 70 units have been damaged by fire or water, or by firefighters having to cut through them to gain access.

The fire crews were dispatched around 11:53 p.m. to the facility on 7551 Greenback Lane across the street from San Juan High School. Firefighters had difficulty reaching the fire inside the property due to limited space and obscured visibility from the smoke, officials said, leading to many of them breathing off of air bottles. Eventually, a 2nd alarm was called due to the workload and to rotate crews.

"It was difficult to access [the fire]," said Battalion Chief Park Wilbourn. "[The units] don't face outside, there's internal hallways that lead to the units, so they were full of smoke."

Continued Wilbourn, "The challenge is you've got a lot of combustibles in a small compartmentalized space. And that fire, once it builds, it has a tremendous amount of fuel and it burns from unit to unit to unit."

The fire took more than an hour to contain, and fortunately there were no injuries. The cause of the fire remains unclear, and an arsonist investigation team is also looking into it. However, officials say there were reports of batteries on site and wanted to remind the public of the importance of never storing flammable materials in storage units.

Further Reading

• How Lithium-Ion Batteries Can Cause Storage Fires
• Rooftop Fire Breaks Out At Safeguard Self Storage
• Damage And Injury At Three-Alarm Storage Fire