A second-alarm fire tore through a one-story commercial building in the 7100 block of South Pacific Boulevard in Huntington Park on Thursday afternoon, with crews arriving to find smoke and fire showing before shifting into defensive operations. The blaze broke out at roughly 2:15 p.m. and prompted a rapid escalation from local fire crews already stretched thin along one of southeast Los Angeles County's busiest commercial corridors.
According to a post from the L.A. County Fire Department, crews from Fire Station 164 responded to the scene and quickly moved to defensive mode amid the fire. The department's incident, labeled Pacific IC, was still developing as of the update, and no cause has been released. Under LACoFD command procedures, a shift to defensive mode happens when interior conditions become too dangerous for firefighters to safely enter, or when the probability of saving lives inside is low, according to Brainscape. That tactical shift directs crews to operate exterior master streams and focus on protecting neighboring storefronts rather than attacking the fire from within.
Public commercial real estate records show the building at 7100–7102 Pacific Boulevard is a 5,385-square-foot, single-story storefront retail structure originally built in 1946, per Showcase.com. Older commercial buildings from that era often feature unreinforced framing or open-truss roofs, structural features that can raise collapse risks once fire takes hold — a likely factor in the defensive posture crews adopted at the scene.
A Corridor With a History of Fires
Thursday's blaze adds to a string of major fires along Pacific Boulevard, long known as Huntington Park's principal commercial strip and historically one of the highest-grossing retail districts in Los Angeles County, according to background compiled from Wikipedia. The avenue became a major regional Latino retail hub in the 1970s and 1980s, drawing shoppers from across southeast L.A. County, and it remains a dense corridor of small storefronts packed close together.
In April 2025, an intentional early-morning fire destroyed a strip mall at Pacific Boulevard and Walnut Street, gutting three businesses and causing a major roof collapse, as documented by OnScene.TV. Arson investigators determined that fire had been set deliberately in a central cafe before spreading to neighboring shops. Then in February, a commercial fire at Pacific Boulevard and East 57th Street triggered a police standoff after suspects barricaded themselves inside a wholesale auto parts store during the blaze, as reported by CBS Los Angeles, with heavily armed Huntington Park police officers surrounding the burned building while firefighters worked to extinguish the flames.
Station 164's Own Recent Recovery
The fire also arrives against the backdrop of Fire Station 164's own recent struggles. Located at 6301 S. Santa Fe Avenue, the station serves as Battalion 13 headquarters and only reopened in April 2025 after undergoing extensive repairs following a structural fire that damaged the station house in May 2024. Battalion 13 supervises eight fire stations across Huntington Park, South Gate, Lynwood, and unincorporated areas including Willowbrook, making it one of the busiest firefighting command units in the county due to heavy call volumes in dense commercial and industrial zones.
Huntington Park does not operate its own municipal fire department; instead, the city contracts directly with the Los Angeles County Fire Department for suppression, rescue, and emergency medical services. Thursday's second-alarm call would typically draw additional engine and ladder companies from Station 165 at 3255 Saturn Avenue, which provides secondary coverage alongside Station 164 during major incidents.
Multi-alarm commercial fires are not new to the city. In November 2022, a multi-alarm blaze gutted a large commercial building in Huntington Park, requiring an extensive exterior defensive operation by county firefighters — a pattern that has repeated itself in the densely packed retail blocks along the city's older commercial corridors. Hoodline previously reported on a vacant Walnut Park market blaze that also drew Station 164 units, underscoring how frequently the battalion's crews are called into action across the region.
It remains unknown which business or businesses operated inside the 7100 block building at the time of the fire, and whether any adjacent storefronts sustained smoke or water damage. LACoFD arson investigators have not yet released findings on what sparked Thursday's blaze, and the department has not indicated whether any injuries occurred during the response.
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