Firefighters were called to the 14900 block of Summit Drive in Eastvale Sunday evening after an outside fire involving stacked pallets at a commercial building spread into the structure itself, prompting crews to request a second alarm and call in help from a neighboring department.
The fire was reported at 5:49 p.m., according to CAL FIRE/Riverside County Fire Department, which posted that firefighters were on scene of an outside fire involving pallets at a commercial building that had spread into the structure. The department requested assistance from the Ontario Fire Department as crews worked to contain the blaze, and it directed anyone with an emergency to call 9-1-1 rather than the department's social media page, noting the page is not actively monitored for emergencies.
The address sits within The Ranch at Eastvale, a 97-acre commercial logistics park that has grown since 2016 into a hub for multi-tenant warehousing and fulfillment operations, including firms like Weber Logistics, Flex Logistics, and VSR Logistics, according to listings tracked by LoopNet. The complex is part of Eastvale's broader transformation from dairy agricultural land into one of the Inland Empire's major freight and distribution centers.
Why Outdoor Pallet Stacks Are a Known Fire Risk
Fire safety experts have long flagged stacked exterior wood pallets as a serious hazard because of how they burn. The National Fire Protection Association warns that the internal airflow gaps created by stacked pallets accelerate combustion and can generate peak heat release rates strong enough to overwhelm standard building sprinkler systems once flames breach a structure. Those same gaps that channel oxygen upward also shield lower layers of a pallet stack from sprinkler water, making an exterior pile difficult to knock down quickly.
California regulators have built rules around exactly that danger. Under Section 315.7 of the California Fire Code, outdoor pallet storage is subject to strict limits, including maximum pile heights of 15 to 20 feet, restrictions on total pile volume, and mandatory separation distances of up to 50 feet from adjacent building walls, according to the International Code Council and the California Building Standards Commission. Those separation requirements exist specifically to keep an exterior pallet fire from ever reaching a structure's exterior walls.
Mutual Aid Across the Riverside-San Bernardino Line
Eastvale's fire and emergency services are provided under contract by CAL FIRE/Riverside County Fire, which operates locally out of Fire Station 27 on Hamner Avenue and Fire Station 31 on Chandler Street, per the City of Eastvale. The city incorporated in 2010 and, rather than maintaining its own fire department, relies on Riverside County's contract fire model. In 2024, Riverside County Fire responded to 4,110 total incidents in Eastvale, including 56 fire calls, according to the department's own reporting.
Because Eastvale borders Ontario along Hellman Avenue, major commercial fires in the area frequently trigger cross-jurisdictional response agreements, which is why Ontario Fire Department crews were requested to assist Sunday, per reporting from MyNewsLA on regional mutual aid arrangements. A similar joint response played out in April, when a six-alarm fire destroyed a 1.2 million-square-foot paper products warehouse on Merrill Avenue in nearby Ontario, an incident that MyNewsLA reported was later investigated as suspected insider arson.
Part of a Regional Pattern
Sunday's fire adds to a string of recent outdoor pallet blazes across Southern California's Inland Empire logistics corridor. NBC Los Angeles has reported on a four-alarm pallet yard fire in Rubidoux in March and a Pomona pallet yard blaze in May that drew more than 100 firefighters and, as Hoodline previously sent black smoke over the region. The recurring pattern reflects the heavy concentration of freight distribution centers across the region, which generate large volumes of outdoor pallet storage.
The Office of the County Fire Marshal, which oversees fire prevention standards and commercial storage inspections in Eastvale through deputy fire marshals assigned to the Northwest Riverside County region, typically leads origin investigations following commercial fires of this kind, according to Riverside County Fire Department. It remains unclear which specific business occupant's building was penetrated by Sunday's flames, whether the outdoor pallet storage at the site met the state's required separation distances, or the ultimate extent of damage inside the structure.
