Fire at Ice Plant Called Worst Ever in Oceanside

A fire that started in the subfreezing storage unit of the Oceanside Ice Co. Tuesday night continued to send a plume of black smoke into the downtown sky Wednesday, more than 12 hours after what Fire Chief Jim Rankin called the worst fire he had ever encountered.

The 75-year-old ice manufacturing and storage structure at 426 S. Cleveland St. caught fire about 9 p.m. Tuesday and was contained about 2 1/2 hours later. Ice-making equipment worth $750,000 that was in another part of the plant was saved, as was a neighboring grocery warehouse. The fire caused about $1.5 million in damage.

Co-owner Jim Brogden said that despite the loss of the entire storage area of the 300-foot by 75-foot building, “our customers won’t even know we’ve had a fire” because three other San Diego-area ice firms have made supplies available to the Oceanside company “so we can carry on as usual.”

“We lost a building, not a business,” Brogden said, adding that the ice storage facilities will be rebuilt and doubled in capacity.

Rankin said the fire was the most difficult he had ever fought because of 16-inch-thick insulation in the walls of the ice storage area.

“In those days, (1910, when the building was constructed) insulation consisted of sawdust and cork,” Rankin explained, “and we had to tear through that to get at the fire.”

Two firefighters sustained minor injuries. Flames from the burning building rose more than 100 feet, the fire chief said. The metal interior walls of the ice storage building heated to near-melting temperatures, making it difficult for firefighters to remain inside the structure.

Sixteen fire engines from Oceanside, surrounding communities and Camp Pendleton, and two aerial platforms were called to the fire, Rankin said. Five engine companies were held in reserve, but the rest of the equipment was deployed around the 22,500-square-foot building to fight the stubborn blaze and prevent it from spreading to nearby buildings.

Refrigerator cars along the Santa Fe Railway main line were moved from the fire’s path, but about 300,000 eight-pound bags of ice stored in the building became a sodden mess from the intense heat.

Four workers were believed to have been on duty, two inside the ice plant and two in the dispatching office across the street, when the fire broke out.

Rankin said Wednesday that investigators were continuing to investigate the cause of the blaze and that “no possibilities have been ruled out, but it begins to look more and more that it was accidental and not a purposely caused fire.”

Rankin said that the building was insured for $2 million. He set the preliminary estimate of damage at $1.5 million, but acknowledged that “it is likely to go up from there because we have to tear apart the building, destroy it entirely, to put the fire out.”

Bulldozers moved in at midday Wednesday to complete demolition of the storage area of the ice plant. Insulation and burned timbers were hauled away to a county landfill near San Marcos, where fire crews stood by to make sure that any smoldering debris was extinguished.

Brogden said he and co-owner Steve Perry are building a $2.5-million to $3-million ice plant in an Oceanside industrial tract in the San Luis Rey valley but still plan to retain the old building near downtown Oceanside as a storage unit. The storage facility will be rebuilt and expanded from its former 290-ton capacity to 450 tons, he said. Ice-making equipment saved from the fire will be moved to the new building, he said.

Brogden estimated that 30 to 40 plant employees will be out of work until the new plant is completed about April 1. The plant employs nearly twice that number of workers during the summer peak season.