County Seeks State Help After Arcata Fire Sends Contaminated Runoff Into Water Systems

All photos and video by Erin Scofield.

The massive fire that destroyed half of an Arcata city block at 10th and H streets has spurred a related emergency, as the county is seeking help defining and addressing the impacts of millions of gallons of potentially contaminated water running off into stormwater and wastewater systems.

At a January 7 special meeting, the county’s Board of Supervisors approved an emergency declaration due to what a written staff report describes as “runoff containing ash, debris, and potentially hazardous substances” from the January 2 fire.

Photo by Erin Scofield. The five-alarm blaze destroyed seven businesses — Northtown Books, Dandar’s Boardgames and Books, Global Village Gallery, Vanilla Sky Company, and Hensel’s Ace Hardware’s paint, candy, and kitchen supply outlets. The loss also includes upper-story apartments, and several other businesses were damaged.

The county’s emergency declaration, however, is based on what the staff report describes as “an imminent threat to public health and safety.” The report says runoff of water potentially contaminated by building contents “may cause significant impacts to environmental resources, including storm drain systems, surface waters and adjacent properties,” and that there are “potential impacts to water quality and environmental health, including downstream effects to aquaculture operations, fisheries and sensitive aquatic habitat.”

Sheriff Billy Honsal declared a local emergency on Jan. 3 and told supervisors that “more than 2 million gallons of water was spent on this fire to make sure that it was only contained to that one block.” He said the “horrific” fire “could have been a catastrophic event for the city” if not for the containment.

Immediately after the fire, the city asked the county Environmental Health Division to assess the aftermath. “Due to a lot of the contaminants that were in these buildings, a lot of contaminants and hazardous waste were potentially pushed down into the wastewater and stormwater systems in the city of Arcata, which again flows to various creeks, sloughs, and ultimately the bay,” Honsal said.

Photo by Erin Scofield. County environmental health staff recommended bringing in the California Environmental Protection Agency for testing and to “make sure that any of the assistance that we needed could be there to help with potential cleanup.” The resources needed to do the testing and cleanup are beyond the city’s and the county’s capacity, and the emergency declaration is a first step toward securing funding assistance.

“There was a lot of water put onto that fire, there was a paint store that was involved in the fire so there’s a lot that went into the storm drains and right now we just don’t have the capacity to assess that,” said Arcata City Manager Merritt Perry. “We really want to be able to leverage those state resources to make sure we’re doing everything that we can to protect our waterways and Humboldt Bay.”

The city’s “secondary focus” is to “support those businesses, the property owners, and the residents who are displaced,” which Perry said will likely be “a much lower dollar amount.”

Arcata Fire District Chief Chris Emmons said the fire was “a countywide event,” bringing in departments from as far away as Weott, the Eel River Valley, and Trinidad.

Supervisor Mike Wilson, whose district includes Arcata, said he was informed of the fire while driving back from an out-of-town family visit. “My phone blew up, of course, and it was really tough to watch in a remote sense,” he said. Wilson lives two blocks from the fire site and said “the folks staying at our house were inundated with smoke and the whole neighborhood was impacted … so it wasn’t just this half block, it was impactful to the entire neighborhood.”

Photo by Erin Scofield. Wilson said the destroyed businesses held importance beyond their economic value. “Each one of them had their own community — if you went into them you would always see many of the same people there,” he said, describing the businesses as “their own community centers.”

There were no deaths related to the fire, but Supervisor Natalie Arroyo said, “Our hearts go out to those who lost pets — I know that happened — and livelihoods and irreplaceable art and pieces of culture” were lost. An “outpouring of community support” has followed the fire, she continued, adding that “I trust that we will be able to leverage even more resources through this emergency declaration.”

The declaration was unanimously approved.

County Seeks State Help After Arcata Fire Sends Contaminated Runoff Into Water Systems

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