County Building’s Fire Doused--by a Sprinkler Flood

Nobody was there, but the office was still swamped.

A small fire Thursday night at the county Hall of Administration set off the sprinkler system, which flooded the fourth floor before firefighters managed to turn it off.

“There was four inches of water on the floor,” said Santa Ana Fire Chief Jim Dalton after touring the five-story structure on Santa Ana Boulevard. “There must have been a few thousand gallons.”

The mishap started about 7 p.m. when a small fire of unknown origin broke out. The sprinklers quickly doused the blaze, but by the time firefighters arrived and figured out how to turn off the flow, the water had deluged the fourth floor and begun seeping into a computer room below.

“The water did much more damage than the fire,” Dalton said. “We got up there pretty quick and covered everything with plastic salvage covers, but obviously the carpet and the furniture are pretty wet.”

Part of the problem, he said, was the time required to navigate the building’s labyrinth of halls and offices.

“There were some locked doors,” Dalton said, “and turning off the sprinkler system takes a whole lot of shut-offs. This building has a lot of pipes.”

The only people there when the fire started were construction workers on a remodeling project, he said.

Dalton could not estimate how much damage was done but said it appeared to be extensive, given that water drenched desks and cubicles and seeped into the computer room.

“I can estimate fire damage,” he said, “but water damage is something else.”

Fire crews set up pumps to drain the artificial lake and were still at work late Thursday. Some county employees, meanwhile, were hearing about the situation and preparing themselves to face the mess.

“We’ll be there early in the morning to see what we need to do to put things right,” said Diane Thomas, public information officer for the county.