An early morning fire Friday caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage at a South Coast storage facility.
Drivers on Highway 101 near downtown Ventura reported seeing flames off the highway at around 4:30 this morning. Responding Ventura firefighters saw the flames and smoke, but it took them several minutes to find the entrance, on the 3000 block of Market Street. They had to break into the locked facility.
They found 30 foot high flames coming from three motor homes, and an SUV on fire. The heat had already caused significant damage to nine other motor homes parked nearby. They stopped the fire before it reached an adjacent storage building, but it suffered some heat damage.
Firefighters were able to knock down the flames in about 20 minutes. No one was hurt, and the cause of the fire is still under investigation.