No One Expected a Smoking Garbage Truck Will Cause Sandalwood Fire In California

(Photo : REUTERS/Gene Blevins)
Los Angeles County firefighters battle a wind-driven wildfire in California.

A video that paved the way to the start of the fatal Sandalwood fire, which destroyed more than 70 homes and killed at least two people in Los Angeles on Thursday, has gone viral on social media. Officials discovered that a garbage truck was the culprit in a deadly fire in Riverside County over the weekend. Posted by a netizen Shawn Melvin on Facebook, the footage shows a CR&R garbage truck. He said he immediately recognized the threat that the situation could create under dry, humid, and windy conditions. He then tried to warn the driver to throw the burning trash somewhere else.

Melvin told ABC7 as he recalled telling the truck driver that he was pleading with the truck driver not to stop there if he has already the fire in the truck as it would be catching fire and may cause a forest fire. 

However, the driver responded to Melvin with a vacant stare before dumping the load of burning garbage near Seventh Street and Sandalwood Drive. The fire quickly erupted within minutes, spread to more than 800 acres in size through the Villa Calimesa Mobile Home Park, destroyed 76 homes, and killed an 89-year-old great grandmother Lois Arvickson and another unidentified resident.

Family members of the 89-year-old grandmother are searching for answers. They last spoke to Arvickson on the phone while trying to escape the blaze but eventually lost contact when the line was dropped. Kim Turner, Arvickson's daughter-in-law, told KESQ that the older woman was narrating about the smoke and everything that happened before they have lost their communication.

California Fire Riverside Captain Fernando Herrera, according to ABC7, said the burning trash pile from the truck and lighting nearby vegetation was the cause of the wildfire. The investigators are now determining whether the CR&R's truck driver unlawfully acted when he disposed of the trash. They are likewise searching for other clues as to whether residents placed something which caused the garbage ablaze. However, authorities said it's still not clear what charges that the truck driver or the garbage collectors could face if proven that they're linked to the recent wildfire.

If there's any, authorities clarified it's unusual for the garbage brought by trucks to catch fire or for the garbage collectors to throw the burning trash on that area.

Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, according to DailyMail, said they'll likewise conduct a death investigation to see if it would lead in criminal charges. However, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CalFire) declined to comment on whether the garbage truck seen in Mr. Melvin's video was the culprit, according to the New York Times. Melvin, on the other hand, said the CalFire officials interviewed him and asked him for pieces of videos and photographs he had of the wildfire and the garbage truck catching some fire.

William C. Stewart, a forestry specialist at the University of California, Berkeley, told the New York Times that some of the things are quite unbelievable when you hear about it. He, however, said some situations occur in a certain probability. Steward said there are countless events that human beings do to create sparks and fires. The Sandalwood fire, according to him, is not the first time he heard of a garbage truck's load igniting a fire.