IRVINE : ‘Suspicious Fire’ Forces Evacuation
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About 20 employees of an Irvine warehouse were evacuated Thursday morning after a suspicious two-alarm fire in a storage room sent thick smoke billowing through the building.
The blaze began shortly before 6:30 a.m. in the storage room at Victory Foam Inc., 17391 Murphy Ave., said Michael McCann, chief investigator for the Orange County Fire Department.
The sprinkler system controlled the flames until firefighters arrived to extinguish them in less than 20 minutes. There were no injuries, and $12,000 in damage was limited to the walls of the storage room and its inventory of foam used for packaging.
Arson investigators remained at the scene more than four hours after the fire, attempting to find the cause.
“Burn indicators led investigators to believe it to be a suspicious fire,” McCann said. “We are interviewing as many employees as we can to get as much information as we can.”
Victory Foam shop manager Manuel Parra said he was unsure how the blaze began.
“We lost only the foam, and now we just have to clean up and everything.”
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