Historic Tustin Blimp Hanger Burns

➡ Dan reminisces about the tragic burning of a historic and iconic landmark, an old LTA Marine base made from plywood, in Tustin. Despite plans to turn it into a startup incubator, the city rejected the proposal due to contaminated soil and lack of utilities caused by decisions made decades earlier.

Hey, it’s Dan. Welcome back. You’re watching. I allegedly, and I’ve got a bad one for you today because I am at the former LTA Marine base and the hangers are on fire. One of them is. And absolutely tragic, guys, growing up here in Tustin, this is been such an iconic historical landmark that is completely destroyed right now. It has been burning all night long. And I had to drive over here just to get some footage of this because it’s absolutely just unbelievable to see, first of all, these structures, 1000ft long, it’s 60, 80ft high in the air.

Built in 1942, everybody thinks that these are made out of cement and they’re not. They’re made out of plywood. They’re the world’s largest plywood structures. And this was the old LTA Marine base. This was the Marine base where they housed all the blimps. And again, growing up here in the city, when I was a kid, when the base was open, we had a tremendous amount of people that I went to school with.

Their dads were corporals and captains and lieutenants, and I didn’t know they were all nice, but just absolutely tragic to see this. Absolutely unbelievable. But in 1999, Diane Feinstein had a committee where they had to see how they could cut cost on getting rid of these bases. And this was one of them. This and the El Toro Marine base that’s up the street. El Toro was originally going to be an international airport, and everybody freaked out about that because they didn’t want their house in the flight path of an international airport.

So that got canceled. That’s one thing that they voted on and voted against. But this has just been an iconic area. This is what they call the district and the legacy. And to give you an idea, the land was donated back to the city. And when it was donated back to the city, they determined that they were going to build a huge shopping district and an area for housing.

And the problem with it is that the Marine base has contaminated soil, okay? That nobody wanted to talk about. And this was back in the days when you would, hey, what do I do with this brake fluid, Sergeant? Just dump it in the grass. Okay. So needless to say, this area, they couldn’t build in a lot of this stuff. So this was the structure that was damaged, thank God, because there’s two structures here.

That’s the other one. And it’s. Okay. Filmed a ton of movies here, Pearl harbor, there’s been events here, different things like that through the years. But it’s absolutely tragic to see this thing burn the way it has. It’s all that plywood. It’s funny, when I was a kid, I thought that was cement, and it’s just all plywood. I’ll tell you something fascinating is that I was going to try to have a startup incubator here in Tuscan, and we wanted to have it here.

Couldn’t have it here because they cut the power and cut the water. There was no water and no power to that building. I heard there was no water. Yeah. Isn’t that terrible? And minimal power. That’s it. They’ve got minimal electricity there. But it was around midnight or something like that. Yeah, around 01:00 a. m. Could be arson. Could be. Now, to give you an idea of how completely massive these structures are, I went over by the other one.

1072ft long, guys. They are 292ft wide, 191ft tall. Absolutely amazing, guys. But just the world’s largest plywood structures that have ever been built. And you’ve got all the news crews out here. Just a different perspective, guys. It’s pretty wild to see this. So show you the devastation from this side, but you can just see it from here. Look at that. That is horrific, guys. Absolutely tragic. Just part of your youth being completely destroyed.

It’s very sad, you know, it’s very sad. As I was walking around the property and looking at the fire, I ran into so many people that were sharing different events that they attended. This was used for everything from filming movies to major events. They even had races out here. They had auto races through the hangars for a couple of years. A big, big deal. But the reason why I’m so familiar with this is that when I was having medical conferences, and in 2017, as my stock started to go up and the company was starting to do better, we wanted to have our own incubator, our own startup lab.

So I went to the city of Tustin, to the planning commission, and said, what a better place than the hangers. So we made a presentation, and man, oh, man, it was tight. It was beautiful. And it was going to bring innovation to these hangers as a great place to bring startups, biotech, medical, everything. And ran into a couple of snags, and the first one was, they hated the idea of letting us have rent for a dollar a year.

That was number one. Number two was, there’s no power to the buildings, there’s no water to the buildings. Some imbecile at some point thought it would be a good idea not only to kill the power to the building, but to take cement and stick it down the water pipes and make it so that they would never have water in the buildings again. So absolutely destroyed any chance of having a viable structure.

Now, Dan, if you want to help us raise the million dollars to get the water reconnected, that would be fantastic. But man, oh man, we were going to have the Tustin Innovation Center. It was going to be a great iconic place. And this model has been used throughout the country recently it was used in San Pedro. They took docks and turned them into an innovation hub. And they used a sea theme to raise money for this.

So a lot of these startups have an ocean and sea worthy themes to the company. How do you have seaweed that can cure ailments and things like that? It was fascinating. But the one thing about having the innovation hub here was it was going to be a real big deal. That was the end of it, guys, and the city wasn’t going tolerate it. And again, this land has not been improved in two and a half decades.

And there’s a reason for that. There’s real problems with the soil here, and it’s going to be interesting. But this hanger that’s burning, this has had structural problems forever, for decades. And they’ve had a crane that has supported part of the roof so it wouldn’t collapse. And they’ve looked for reasons to rip this thing down, and now they’ve got it. So it’ll be interesting to see how this plays out.

It’ll be interesting to see how the fire was started. But man, oh man, this is just devastating news. And if you’ve been to Southern California, if you’ve flown in, even to LA, and you’ve gone through Orange county at all, you’ve seen these buildings and they’re iconic, to say the least. But I have been inside of those buildings several times. It’s just absolutely stunning to look up and see those catwalks that were way up there and it know quite the sight.

So this is absolutely tragic. I wanted to share this with you guys today, and please don’t forget to share this video like the channel and like the video, and subscribe to the channel. Thank you. Onward and upward, guys. I will see you guys very soon. If you want to get a hold of me, it’s. Hello@iallegedly. com. And I could talk about this for hours, but hope you guys enjoyed this.

Something a little different for you guys to end your day. And again, it’s tragic and just part of the allure of Orange county and something that has been here forever is gone now. So share your thoughts on all this stuff, guys. Know what year these were built? 19. 42. 46. Right after. Right after the war. 42, right during the war. 42, they housed all the blimps. Yeah. That was going to be the technology that was going to save us all from the nut.

It’s going to be blimps, man. Growing up here in Tustin, man, this is tragic. It’s absolutely terrible to see this. Yeah. Such a landmark. It is. Thank God it was this one, because this is the damaged one. This is the one that they couldn’t get fixed. It had that problem on the end, and they had to put a crane up there to support it. So thank God, because they were thinking, do we tear it down? What do we do? They had an open house on one of these about five years ago.

Yeah, that was that one. Yeah. Pretty interesting to walk into that. See the little catwalks when you’re inside? Look up. Yeah, very cool. Way up the little catwalk across here. Those 1942 catwalks I’m going to pass on. Yeah. All wood. Oh, there it goes. Hell, yeah. Look at. Wow, that’s thunderous. A year worth of building, it crumbles in a day. .