WillBridge Blaze Believed Set by Resident

Santa Barbara City Fire officials arrested a resident of WillBridge on Tuesday, January 18, in connection with a blaze that broke out at that organization’s Montecito facility the previous night. City Fire Marshall Joe Poire said the suspect, Diana Plascencia, had disappeared during the fire, but turned up at the County’s Alcohol Drug and Mental Health Services’ CARES unit the next day, when she was taken into custody. A police report has been filed by City Fire officials, detailing the circumstances that link Plascencia to the fire’s origin.

“It’s the totality of the circumstances of the case that led to the arrest,” said Poire. “There aren’t a lot of details I can give you.”

Poire did say, however, that the fire began in one partition of a divided second-story room that Plascencia shared. At the time the fire broke out, another woman was asleep in a bedroom adjacent to Plascencia’s.

“Anytime someone is suspected of igniting a fire in an occupied dwelling, we consider [that person] a pretty extreme hazard to life safety,” Poire said. To read more, see homelessinsb.org.