A wood-supported hangar built in Tustin, California, to house surveillance blimps during World War II went up in smoke Tuesday. Its twin structure, however, remains standing, and no injuries were reported.
The Orange County Fire Authority was notified shortly after midnight of a fire at the North Hangar at the former Marine Corps Air Station Tustin.
Firefighters posted a video of the structure burning on X at 1:40 a.m. PST.
No injuries were reported, and no one appears to have been inside the North Hangar when it caught fire, Orange County Fire Authority Chief Brian Fennessy said at a press conference.
The blaze grew into a three-alarm fire, and firefighters opted to let the structure collapse outright before moving in on the ground to put out the flames.
“The fire is not burning tremendously or actively, but we expect the fire will continue to burn likely for several hours, possibly even several days,” Chief Fennessy said. No other structures were threatened by the continuing fire.
The two hangars were first commissioned in 1942, when the site was known as the Santa Ana Naval Station, in order to house blimps used to survey the coast of Southern California for enemy submarines, according to the Tustin Area Historical Society.
The remaining hangar is one of the largest wood-supported structures in the world. It is 1,088 feet long, 297 feet wide and has a roof 178 feet high, according to the 1975 entry for the two hangars in the National Register of Historic Places.
After the Marine base closed in 1999, possession of the hangars went to the U.S. Department of the Navy. The North Hangar that caught fire was damaged in a 2013 windstorm and had been closed, according to the Tustin city website.
“This is not the end for what we call the North Hangar that we envisioned. It’s not as dignified a treatment as it deserved,” Tustin Mayor Austin Lumbard said at the press conference.
The pair of hangars can also be seen on film and television, including in “Pearl Harbor” and on “Star Trek” and “JAG,” according to the city website.
• Brad Matthews can be reached at bmatthews@washingtontimes.com.