Firefighters Put Out Blaze, Then Find Pot; Man Arrested

Police arrested a Garden Grove man Friday after firefighters who doused a blaze in his home found cultivated marijuana plants in a pantry.

Firefighters inspecting the partly burned home at 10502 Halelani Way found about 20 plants of the illegal herb, each standing about four to five feet tall, police said.

The firefighters told a police officer standing outside the home about their find.

Police declined to estimate the street value of the plants.

The fire began in the kitchen of the single-story home. Although investigators did not know how it started, they had ruled out arson, said Garden Grove Fire Department Battalion Chief Jerry Halberstadt.

About 14 firefighters worked 10 minutes to douse the flames, which caused about $40,000 damage but no injuries, Halberstadt said.

Police said the homeowner, Bernard Howard Odom, 34, who was alone at the time of the fire, had a sophisticated cultivation operation with large growing lights, a filtered watering system, temperature gauges and heating controls to accelerate plant growth.

Police said they also found 15 eight-ounce bags of marijuana in the home. Odom was arrested on suspicion of cultivation and possession of marijuana for sale.

Drug investigators said such “indoor grows” are rare in Orange County but that they are part of a statewide trend.

“It’s starting to become the rage, the thing to do,” said J.D. Miles, special agent in charge of the Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement.

Marijuana growers, frustrated by aerial searches for the plants, are increasingly going indoors to raise more of the substance, officials said. “The indoor growers are probably about 30% of the seizures statewide,” said Dale Ferranto, the special agent in charge of Campaign Against Marijuana Planting, a joint law-enforcement task force based in Sacramento.

Statewide, Drug Enforcement Administration agents have arrested more than 400 people so far this year in connection with indoor marijuana cultivation, authorities said. The number has risen steadily from the 136 recorded in 1989, the year law enforcement officials began keeping such records.