Wharf Museum Hit by Blaze
Hundreds of tourists and sportsfishermen were evacuated--some of them reluctantly--from Stearns Wharf on the beachfront here Thursday afternoon when a fire broke out in a new aquatic museum, causing an undetermined amount of damage to the building, its displays and to the wooden pilings of the pier itself.
No one was reported injured in the fire that erupted in the Santa Barbara Natural History Museum Sea Center. But flames destroyed two nearby vehicles, set about 100 pier pilings ablaze and caused minor damage to the adjacent offices of the Nature Conservancy. The museum had been open only about a week.
When the fire started at about 3:30 p.m., city wharf workers rushed through the restaurants and shops on the popular old wooden structure urging patrons to leave. Most left calmly.
A group of diners in a wharf restaurant, however, was not at all anxious to leave.
“The fire isn’t going to come over here,” one said. “We want to finish our meal.”
Firefighters, some of them spraying water from boats, brought the blaze under control within an hour while onlookers lined the beach.
It was not immediately known whether the live aquatic displays in the museum had been harmed by the flames.
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