Silo Fire at Nut Processing Site Causes $300K in Damages

A fire in a three-story silo on Saturday night caused $300,000 in structural damages to the Wonderful Pistachios and Almonds LLC nut processing facility in Lost Hills, CA, but first responders and employees were able to prevent millions of dollars in damages to the rest of the site, the Kern County Fire Department told local media in a press release.

Responding to the site at about 9:20 p.m., discovering a burning silo that threatened other nearby structures. An employee told the Kern Golden Empire newspaper that the silo had a storage capacity of one million lbs of pistachios.

Firefighters were able to stop the blaze before it spread. The Kern County Fire Department estimated that damages to the site’s structures totaled some $300,000.

Wonderful Pistachios and Almonds calls itself the “world’s largest grower and processor of almonds and pistachios.” The Lost Hills facility is the company’s primary processing site, housing the firm’s largest pistachio processing facility as well as almond processing and manufacturing sites.

Officials are still working to determine the cause of the fire.

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