STOCKTON, Calif. — Investigators in Stockton are looking into what caused flames to break out inside a warehouse along downtown's waterfront Wednesday morning.
The fire started around 6:45 a.m. Wednesday inside a warehouse near Lindsay and Harrison Streets, across the street from the Banner Island Ballpark, Stockton Fire Department Battalion Chief Jeremy Davis said.
The 2-alarm fire destroyed the warehouse and damaged some of the items inside of it. Fire crews were able to save surrounding buildings from also going up in flames. No injuries were reported in connection to the fire.
"What I heard was a lot of crackling, like somebody breaking up wood," said Oc Eddings, who was asleep in his tent on Harrison Street as the flames broke out feet away. "I finally came out of my tent and looked across the street and saw the flames coming through the roof over there and it got really intense."
By the time firefighters got to the structure, the building was too heavily involved in flames to enter and had been determined to be a total loss, according to Davis.
Fire crews say that the warehouse was occupied with products, but that officials have not been able to determine who owns the structure and whether it was used as a business or a storage unit.
Just a block away from Wednesday's blaze, a pile of charred rubble and debris still sits from a separate fire that destroyed the historic Colberg Boat Works building in 2022.
"It's been a hotspot for fires over the last year or so," said Davis of the downtown waterfront, noting that while there is a large population of homeless in the area, it's unknown if that contributed to Wednesday morning's fire. "There's been a lot of fires in the last, I'd say six months."
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