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Man charged in Ontario warehouse fire that fueled toilet paper fears (www.msn.com)

submitted 1 week ago by cm0002 to c/nottheonion@civilloquy.com

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A San Bernardino County man has been federally charged with deliberately setting a fire that destroyed a massive warehouse in Ontario, California, causing an estimated $500 million in damage, federal prosecutors said Friday.

Chamel Abdulkarim, 29, of Highland, is charged in a federal criminal complaint with arson of a building used in interstate and foreign commerce, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California. The complaint was filed late Thursday.

The early‑morning April 7 fire destroyed a 1.2 million‑square‑foot warehouse leased by Kimberly‑Clark, a major producer of toilet paper, paper towels and baby products. No injuries were reported.

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[–] db2@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

That sounds like bullshit to me. It was too late to turn the sprinklers back on?

[–] Rakonat@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

The fire fighters turned them off because the sprinklers use a lot of water and not in a manner thats actually effective in fighting the fire, effectively giving the firefighters less water and pressure to do their work.

Because of the way the system was designed, a single control covered the entire system, rather than be able to disable specific sections.

The arson waited for the firefighters to arrive and combat the first fire and confirm they disabled the sprinklers (you can hear he has a radio in the video.) So while the firefighters were busy with the first, he started another series of fires elsewhere and by the time the responders realized there was more fire/arson still on the premises, it was too dangerous to enter than part of the building and were forced to just pull everyone back and attempt to contain the fire from the edges. But in a massive warehouse full of paper products, once a fire gets hot enough sprinklers aren't that effective anymore.

Not sure if this particular type of suppression system only used water from the mains or if it had reserve tanks to allow it run for a set amount of time before needing to be recharged. But the facility was massive so there is no possible way to run the entire system for extended periods just using water from the city.