A fire gutted several units of a storage facility on Prado Road Sunday afternoon, causing an unknown amount of damage and blanketing nearby fields and streets with thick smoke.
A fire investigator was on hand at San Luis Mini Storage facility, 445 Prado Road, but it was not immediately clear what caused the blaze.
Officials said Sunday they wouldn't have a damage estimate until today at the earliest, but it appeared to be significant.
The blaze broke out in a building that had 14 storage units. Of those, six were declared a total loss and two to four sustained significant damage.
Firefighters spent most of the day dealing with the blaze.
The call came to firefighters at about 11:45 a.m., and 40 firefighters responded with six engines and a ladder truck, according to CDF/County Fire Battalion Chief Michael Harkness.
The acrid smoke billowing from the storage units posed a problem for fire crews, who needed masks in order to breathe, Harkness said. A truck was sent down from Templeton midway through the afternoon to refill firefighters' air bottles.
At 9:30 p.m. firefighters had to be called back out to the mini-storage units when flames re-emerged.
Crews tried to save as much as possible and tried to minimize the use of water in an effort to avoid damaging anything, Harkness said. Nothing but cardboard boxes and paper files filled an entire unit, which would have been ruined if they had been sprayed.
"Our initial efforts were to salvage as much property as possible," Harkness said. "While we're doing firefighting efforts, we're also pulling stuff out of the adjacent units."
He said crews removed several vehicles and other antiques from the units. But not everything was saved.
"I don't have any renters' or homeowners' insurance," said San Luis Obispo resident Joshua Douglas, a collector who lost some $10,000 of antiques in the blaze. "I'm hoping the people here have some sort of fire policy -- otherwise, I'm screwed."
Douglas said he collects antiques from yard sales around the county and sells them at swap meets -- and he lost much, if not all, of what he stored at the facility. That included tapestries, furniture and vintage clothing, some of which was 150 years old.
"It's been for the last five years a fairly lucrative business," he noted. "I can make on a weekend what I normally make in a week on my regular job. And now it's all gone."
The owner of San Luis Mini Storage 445 Prado Road declined to comment, and instead told bystanders to leave his property.
