A massive fire broke out at a 1.2 million-square-foot concrete warehouse owned by Kimberly Clark near Hellman and Merrill Avenues in Ontario, California, around 12:36 a.m. Tuesday morning local time, according to a joint statement released by the Ontario Police and Ontario Fire Department.
Around 1 p.m., the Ontario Fire Department said on X that the fire had been contained to the building and knocked down, but not completely extinguished yet.
“We’ve had good success this morning [in containing the fire],” Fire Deputy Chief Mike Wedell said in an interview with NBC. “We had a very quick response time in less than eight minutes.”
Ontario Police said that Chanel Abdulkarim—a 29-year-old Highland resident and employee of NFI Industries, a third party distributor for Kimberly Clark—is suspected to have started the fire and was quickly found for questioning and taken into custody.
He was subsequently charged with multiple alleged arson-related felonies and is being held at the West Valley Detention Center.
“This fire was originally reported, very early on, as suspicious in nature,” Wedell said. “There were multiple reporting parties. … We are fortunate to have cameras in the area, and very early on, we identified an individual of interest.”
After initially attempting to fight the fire from inside, an additional set of firefighters were deployed and crews were pushed out from “extremely rapid-fire growth” and fought the fire from afar using powerful water hoses.
The departments said approximately 175 firefighters, 20 fire engines, 15 firetrucks, 17 chief officers, and two ambulances were deployed at the scene.
The Ontario Fire Department added that it received assistance from partner agencies, including San Bernardino County Fire, Riverside County Fire, LA County Fire, Chino Valley Fire, and Rancho Cucamonga Fire, among others.
Wedell said there were approximately 20 employees on-site at the time of the fire, but the fire department have no reported injuries of civilians or first responders.
Videos from the San Bernardino County Fire Protection District show the warehouse, a major distribution center for Kimberly Clark’s paper goods and supplies, completely engulfed in flames.
The warehouse, which is only around seven miles away from Ontario International Airport, has an estimated value of approximately $156 million, according to real estate platform Zillow.














