Santa Barbara County Fire briefs Solvang council on 2024 call volumes and three recent restaurant fires

Santa Barbara County Fire officials presented the department’s 2024 response summary to the Solvang City Council and described three recent downtown restaurant fires that caused major property damage but no injuries.

Deputy Chief Garrett Huff told the council Solvang recorded about 681 incidents in 2024, including 412 EMS/rescue calls, 14 vehicle accidents and eight structure fires. Station 30, the Solvang station, is staffed daily with a captain, engineer, firefighter‑paramedic and firefighter‑EMT; apparatus includes a medic engine, a truck, a brush truck and a utility vehicle.

County fire briefed the council on several system‑level changes: the new Regional Fire Communication Center (RFCC), a combined dispatch and emergency operations expansion, is slated to open the week of May 12; the county’s Office of Emergency Management was merged into the fire department in 2023; and the county extended American Medical Response’s (AMR) ambulance contract in February 2024 to a four‑year agreement with options to extend. Huff said county staff had purchased 35 ambulances while preparing to provide ambulance transport; crews plan to request county board approval to dispose of surplus assets.

Battalion Chief Aloni Maniscalco provided details on three Solvang fires. The first, at a Jack in the Box (238 State Highway 246, Buellton) on Oct. 13, 2024, began in a southeast storage room and caused major smoke damage and a partial roof collapse; investigators attributed the origin to spontaneous ignition of oil‑soaked rags improperly stored in violation of fire‑code requirements. The second, on Dec. 5, 2024, at a steakhouse on Fourth Street, was reported after flames were visible; that structure had been unoccupied and was under investigation. The third, at Solvang Brew Company (1547 Mission Drive) on Jan. 20, 2025, began in a shed attached to the north exterior wall; investigators again cited spontaneous ignition of improperly stored oil‑soaked rags.

Maniscalco told council members that none of the three buildings had automatic sprinklers or automatic fire detection systems and that proper storage of oily rags — in a metal container with a self‑closing lid, per fire‑safety guidance referenced by investigators — likely would have prevented at least two of the fires. He also noted dense exposures in the downtown commercial corridor that complicate firefighting in those incidents. "According to the investigator, [the Jack in the Box] fire originated in a storage room located in the southeast corner of the building. The cause was determined to be spontaneous ignition of oil soaked rags that were improperly stored in violation of the fire code," Maniscalco said. He repeated the same root cause for the Solvang Brew Company fire: improper storage of oil‑soaked rags.

Council members asked about response times and prevention. Huff said the department’s target is roughly 4–6 minutes to initial arrival depending on distance; for the Jack in the Box and other incidents the first engine arrived in under five minutes and the full alarm force arrived within about 12 minutes. County fire staff and city staff described local and county vegetation and abatement programs, upcoming goat grazing and California Conservation Corps contracts for fuel reduction work, and outreach tied to updated CAL FIRE hazard severity maps expected to come before the council in a future public hearing.

The presentation was informational; there was no council action requested or taken on fire department operational items at the meeting.