UPDATE, 2:54 p.m.:

Arcata Fire Chief Chris Emmons followed up via phone and confirmed that the fire started in one of several transient encampments and “appeared to be human-caused.”

“I would say [it was] intentionally set,” Emmons said, noting that there were no campfires or electrical wiring near the flames. 

“It looked impressive initially,” he added. “You see a lot of smoke coming out of a large building and think, ‘Oh gosh, we’re doing this again.’” 

With many local residents still reeling from the devastating Jan. 2 fire that destroyed half a block of businesses and apartments, Emmons noted a specific connection with this latest blaze: The warehouse floor had a lot of fresh white paint on it — paint that splattered fire engines and APD vehicles — and law enforcement identified the buckets as stolen paint from the Ace Hardware paint center. 

“I looked, and sure enough, [the buckets] were melted and covered in soot” from the Jan. 2 fire, Emmons said. “It looks like a bunch of stolen paint was just dumped on the ground. Now we have to go scrub all of the vehicles.”

Emmons also confirmed that nobody was injured, and the fire was pretty easily extinguished. 

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Original post:

A commercial structure fire was reported shortly after noon near the intersection of Highway 255 and K Street. | Photos courtesy Jason Olson.

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Shortly after noon today a fire broke out amid an encampment of unhoused people living inside a graffiti-covered warehouse in Arcata.

Black smoke billowed from large garage doors in the building, located near the intersection of Samoa Boulevard and K Streets. The warehouse is the former home of Soilscape Solutions, a cannabis garden shop that has since relocated to Eureka. 

Jason Olson, who works at the nearby factory of Wing Inflatables, tells the Outpost via email that everyone had evacuated from the building by the time he walked over to check it out — everyone “except for one guy who was worried about his cats that live in there.”

Arcata Fire Department and the Arcata Police Department responded to the scene, and the fire was quickly extinguished, according to Olson. The man who was worried about his cats escaped unharmed. 

“I assume the cats made it out safely as well,” Olson said via email. “It wasn’t a very big fire.”

We’ve reached out to AFD for more information and will update this post when we hear back. Below are some more photos sent by Olson.