At around 10 p.m. Tuesday, smoke filled the air in Los Alamos when construction equipment caught fire at the Village Square housing development site.
“Last night, I heard loud noises like popping sounds. I went and looked out my bedroom window and saw a large fire on the construction side,” said Christine Adams of Los Alamos.
Adams lives just a short walk away from the future housing development.
She says she and her neighbors quickly dialed 911 as they watched and smelled the equipment burning.
“It smelled horrible. The rubber burning, the fuel burning,” she recalled. “The smoke was so dark black. Even at night, you could see how dark it was.”
Santa Barbara County Fire Department Public Information Officer Scott Safechuck says when units arrived, they found a backhoe fully engulfed in flames.
“Now that you mention it, I did hear something last night,” said Los Alamos resident Mary Maranville. “I thought it was the Air Force Base. I didn’t think it was a fire across the street from my house.”
Fire officials say they were able to extinguish the fire in just over an hour.
After hearing about what happened, Maranville says she's relieved the damage wasn’t worse.
“It has been very moist since we have been getting a lot of rain, but imagine if that happened in the middle of the summer," she said.
We also tried speaking with the construction crews that the developer, Legacy Homes, contracted for the housing project. While they declined to provide more details about what happened, they were back to work on the development Wednesday morning.
“What caused the fire? What kind of equipment is out here?” Adams asked. “It seems kind of shoddy and scary."
The Village Square housing project was initially approved by the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors nearly 20 years ago, but a series of delays kept construction from getting started until December 2022. Since construction started, it has been a hot topic that has drawn much opposition from the Los Alamos community.
Representatives with Legacy Homes say the fire likely started due to an electrical issue with one of their subcontractor’s pieces of equipment but that there was no damage to the surrounding property.
Safechuck adds that the exact cause of the fire is under investigation.
