Advertisement

Personnel may have contributed to rekindling of fire at Dodger Stadium, fire department official says

Share

Dodger Stadium personnel may have contributed to the rekindling of a storage room fire this week by failing to remove flammable materials and by turning on a fan that reignited flames, an official with the Los Angeles Fire Department said.

Dodgers management had accepted responsibility for removing paper products from the reserve-level storage room after the facility caught fire Saturday while the Dodgers were playing the Florida Marlins, Fire Department Assistant Chief Daryl Arbuthnott said.

The same room caught fire again early Monday morning.

“Had they removed the product, it wouldn’t have been a problem at all,” Arbuthnott said.

Arbuthnott said there were salvageable items the Dodgers were trying to remove and that “the ball may have been dropped communication-wise.”

Advertisement

“We are in complete compliance with what LAFD has asked us to do and have been cooperating fully with them since the moment it took place,” Josh Rawitch, the Dodgers’ vice president of communications, said in a statement.

Stadium workers also may have unwittingly helped reignite the fire by turning on a fan that was intended to disperse smoke, according to Arbuthnott.

“Someone turned on a fan to clear the smoke out,” he said, “and [instead] they fanned the fire.”

The cause of the fire remains under investigation.

Advertisement