Fire destroys plane, Corvette at Petaluma Municipal Airport

No one was injured in a structure fire Monday afternoon at the Petaluma Municipal Airport, which destroyed an airplane and an older Corvette. The cause of the blaze is still under investigation.

The fire stayed contained to the individual hangar and didn’t spread to the others, according to Petaluma Fire Department Battalion Chief Kevin Weaver.

“Nobody was hurt including pedestrians and there was nobody in the building when it caught on fire,” he said.

Weaver, who was off duty but happened to be in the area, responded to the 911 call and was first on the scene. Soon after, the on-duty battalion chief and two fire engines came down the runway and contained the flames. Additional engines arrived to protect exposed neighboring hangars until the fire was out.

“It didn’t spread to any of the other exposures,” Weaver said. “In the backside there are some high-end RVs but fortunately it didn’t get any of those.”

Weaver said it was more of a “contents fire” as the major loss was damage of the airplane and Corvette in the hangar. While the estimated dollar loss of the incident may exceed $150,000, there was an estimation of $2 million in surrounding assets protected by the responding units.

He said the city handles fires such as these with a synergistic approach shared between the building department, the Fire Prevention Bureau, the police department, the airport’s representative and the fire department.

A woman who witnessed the fire and prefers to remain anonymous said she saw black smoke billowing and wondered what was going on. “We didn’t think about calling,” she said. “I wanted to turn away, I didn’t really want to breathe it.”

Emma Molloy is an intern for the Argus-Courier. She can be reached at emma.molloy@pressdemocrat.com.