Six fire engines and crews from the Santa Maria city and Santa Barbara County fire departments spent the better part of a hot Sunday afternoon battling a smoky, stubborn blaze that ignited cardboard packing boxes in a business yard at 110 Industrial Parkway.

The fire caused an evacuation at Waller Park, and triggered outages to customers of Pacific Gas & Electric Co. and Comcast Cable, according to fire officials. More than 200 PG&E customers remained without electricity late Sunday night, according to a spokesman.

The fire started in an outdoor storage area of Central Coast Packaging, and burned pallets of waxed packing boxes in a 10,000-square-foot space, said Santa Barbara County fire Capt. Eli Iskow.

About noon, people in adjacent Waller Park reported hearing a loud boom, and some area businesses reported an immediate loss of electricity, said Dan Orr, Santa Maria fire division chief.

Black smoke from the burning waxed boxes was visible throughout Santa Maria for most of the afternoon, Iskow said.

The cause of the fire, reported at 12:05 p.m., remained under investigation Sunday night, Orr said. Crews contained the fire in about an hour, and it was reported controlled in two to three hours, he said.

At Central Coast Packaging, the stacked boxes, waxed and bundled together for easy transport, were “basically a candle” and fueled the fire, Orr said. Destroyed in the fire were two semi trucks' trailers and many pallets of boxes, he said.

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Orr estimated the damages at nearly $1 million.

About 3 p.m. Sunday, Paul Carlotti, owner of Central Coast Packaging, stood outside his work yard watching crews tackle the smoldering piles of cardboard.

“I'm happy the county firefighters got here as fast as they did,” he said.

At 10 p.m. Sunday, 240 customers were still without electricity, said J.D. Guidi, media representative for Pacific Gas & Electric. PG&E hoped to have electricity fully restored to all customers early today, Guidi said.

Some customers experienced a momentary outage about noon, but at 12:26 p.m., the full outage was reported, and 5,910 PG&E customers in the area lost electricity in that initial outage, Guidi said.

The fire burned two large PG&E poles and large power lines, Orr said.

While no serious injuries were reported, one firefighter was treated for embers in his eye at Marian Medical Center but returned to duty later in the day, Orr said, and a second firefighter was treated for heat exhaustion.

During the first two to three hours of the suppression efforts, crews used approximately 900,000 gallons of water, Orr said. As fires go, “it was a big one,” he said.

In addition to PG&E's outage, Comcast subscribers in Orcutt, Lompoc and the Santa Ynez Valley were without service for most of the afternoon, Orr said, noting that the fire affected the cable company's “main trunk” that provides service for those cities.

A Comcast spokesperson was not available for comment Sunday.

April 14, 2008