By Chris Durant
Eureka Times Standard
EUREKA, Calif. — Last week a fire scorched a room in a house on Alice Avenue and did more than $5,000 in damage.
There was no one home, but the house was full — of growing marijuana plants.
The owner, Lavina Collenberg, had no idea that the “nice and clean-cut” people she rented to appeared to not even be living there, using the entire home to grow marijuana.
“It’s personally frustrating to me that someone would rent a property from a landlord under honorable pretenses and then destroy it,” said Arcata Fire Protection Chief John McFarland.
It was McFarland’s firefighters who extinguished the blaze before it could spread through the house and into the kitchen, which had 14 cases of butane.
“That would have surely killed our fire crew,” McFarland said.
It’s the code violations that frustrate McFarland more than anything. Those put his firefighters at risk.
“Everything is built to code for a reason,” McFarland said. “If a home is built to code we should be able to contain a fire to one room.”
Holes cut in walls, ceilings and floors allow fires to spread quickly and sneakily to other parts of the house.
“They do it with no construction knowledge whatsoever,” McFarland said.
The “home grown” wiring and Jerry-rigged electrical systems start most of the fires at unattended grows.
In some homes, firefighters have come across booby-traps and locks far beyond normal residential locks.
“Because they’re fearful someone will steal their stuff,” McFarland said.
Though it’s technically legal in California with the proper documentation, reports of arrests and the blurry line between federal and local interpretations of the law make growers hesitant to be upfront with their grows.
“Due to its legal status marijuana continues to be way overvalued,” wrote 215 lawyer Eugene Denson in an e-mail. “Were it totally legal it would cost something between tomatoes and fine wines, per useable units. But as it is a one person legal indoor garden may yield 3 pounds, and have a value of something on the order of $9000. People steal marijuana, and usually don’t get caught. It is fungible (thus hard to identify) and easily sold. So gardeners are secretive.”
One example of a 215 compound was a fire in the Jacoby Creek area. When it was discovered there was no access by the doors, firefighters went to through the window only to find another wall just behind the drapes.
“The whole house burned down,” McFarland said.
There have been suggestions on how to make medical marijuana grows safe, like one Denson cites in his e-mail.
“Once Denis Peron, who wrote 215, suggested that people be allowed to grow in gardens on top of police stations,” Denson wrote. “It was funny, but he had a point. If people had certainty that the police were not going to rip them off, then they could be better protected against thieves who don’t operate under color of law, and more open about things. In other words law enforcement is partly to blame for the present situation - but not entirely to blame.”
Denson also referred to a proposal in Mendocino County that would charge medical marijuana growers $250 per plant with the money going to fire departments.
“To pay for the costs of fire service to the indoor grows,” Denson wrote.
Denson made other suggestions on how to monitor the grows, minimizing the danger to firefighters and first responders if something goes wrong.
“Perhaps indoor grows should have to be registered with one of the Home-alert types of business,” Denson wrote. “It wouldn’t stop fires but it would result in early detection. Maybe they should have sprinkler systems mandatory.”
But McFarland said even if special provisions were put into place, the medical marijuana growers who are gutting houses and growing under multiple doctor recommendations wouldn’t open up their gardens for officials to check.
“I can guarantee you, we would not be welcome,” McFarland said.
Law enforcement is always called in when grows are found during fires but if the proper documentation is found then it becomes a code violation issue and not a criminal one.
Brenda Godsey, Humboldt County Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman, said deputies check to make sure the grows are “in compliance with the canopy size and the numbers,” that have been determined by the county.
Current guidelines are 99 plants and/or a canopy of 100 square-feet.
McFarland said he believed that growing is more prominent in Arcata than anywhere else, saying more than half of all Arcata house fires are related to marijuana grows.
Godsey said it’s not limited to Arcata.
“It’s all over the county,” she said.
It’s the homes that are totally converted into grows, and almost always rented, that McFarland takes the most issue with.
“They don’t do this to their own houses,” McFarland said. “They don’t want to run the risk of losing their own property.”
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