Originally built in 1942 as a Marine Corps Air Station, the Tustin Hangar grew to become a historically significant piece of Orange County. At 17-stories high, more than 1000-feet long, and 300-feet wide, this was one of the largest wooden structures in the world. Firefighters responded to a three alarm fire at the Tustin site around 1 a.m. on Tuesday, and arrived with the building still visually largely intact. When one of the world’s largest wooden structures begins to burn, however, there isn’t much that can be done but contain the blaze.
After fighting the fire for more than three hours with trucks and helicopters, the team on site determined the safest thing to do was to allow the building to collapse and send in a ground team to finish the extinguishing of the blaze. With this large of a structure and giant wooden trusses, it wouldn’t have been safe to enter the structure and try to fight the fire from inside. Thankfully the building was empty and nobody was hurt in the process of its destruction.
“It’s definitely not a normal fire, but today because of the complex fire operation, our incident commanders decided that they are going to use helicopters along with the truck companies,” OCFA Captain Thanh Nguyen, told KTLA 5. “Our firefighters are situated outside [the hangar] and they are placing their units in the most advantageous spots to get water into the structure. Then, should the building collapse, they are not in the line of fire.”
The base was closed at the end of the Cold War, when the Federal government was looking for ways to reduce its budget. The site was passed off to Orange County to run and operate. Reports from the area indicate that this building was beginning to fall into disrepair, and had been vacant for some time before the fire took it down. There is still one standing blimp hangar on the site, which is occasionally used for hosting events or filming.
In the car world, the Tustin Hangar was recently used for the 2019 media launch of the C8-generation Corvette (above).
The cause of the fire has not been announced, and is still under investigation.