Early Sunday morning, shortly after 5 a.m. and over an hour before the sun came up, a Carpinteria resident was startled awake by a fiery “glow” at a nearby property along Foothill Avenue. The concerned neighbor called the incident into dispatch, and by 5:21 a.m. the Carpinteria Summerland Fire Protection District was at the scene of the 4900 block of Foothill, where fire crews found a “large greenhouse” used for growing cannabis had caught fire, with flames and heavy smoke billowing from the structure into the dark morning sky.
According to Grace Rampton, spokesperson for the Carpinteria Summerland Fire Protection District, the smoke and fire pouring out of a large portion of the roof “could be seen from as far away as Linden Avenue.”
Five engines responded to the scene along with additional emergency assistance from the Montecito Fire Protection District, Santa Barbara County Fire Department, Ventura County Fire Department, Santa Barbara City Fire Department, Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office, and AMR.
Fire crews were able to contain the blaze to one section of the greenhouse — with less than 10 percent of the entire 140,000 square-foot greenhouse affected by the fire — and by 6:26 a.m., firefighters had knocked down the blaze completely.
Rampton said that the cause of the fire is still under investigation. The building, which is part of a larger cannabis facility just to the east of Carpinteria High School, has been temporarily red-tagged while the damages are assessed.
