BRANDON, S.D. (KELO) – A Brandon cannabis cultivation center caught on fire early this morning which resulted in a total loss of the interior of the building and all of their own product.
Around 5 a.m. on Thursday, Dec. 14, Shangri-La Cultivation’s interior went up in flames, damaging their product and equipment, according to owner and CEO TJ Cameron. Although it is too early to know the full extent of the damages, Cameron said there was nearly a million dollars lost.
“I mean, it’s not burnt to the ground, but essentially it’s a total loss,” he said. “I’m basically out of business. We hope to recover but it’s gonna not be a comfortable road.”
At this time, the exact cause of the fire and explosion is unknown, or which came first. Cameron said there was an ambient heater connected to a gas line that had fallen and the fire department told Cameron their gas meter was uncontrollable. Cameron doesn’t know if the heater fell before or after the fire started.
Cameron wanted to make it clear that the fire had nothing to do with Shangri-La’s cannabis production or any chemicals in the building.
“We’re an organic grower so we don’t even have non-synthetic chemicals in the building that could potentially be an excess fire damage,” he said. ““We just wanna make people know that because if it was our chemicals, we would just say so, but that doesn’t appear to be the case. We wanna make sure that the public knows that just from a safety perspective.”
In Shangri-La’s 10,000 square-foot facility, they grow their own product, but also treat and eliminate contaminants from eight other cultivation centers. Cameron said they had about $500,000 in their own product that was completely destroyed, but they have about $300,000 of product from other centers that they believe was unharmed.
“Luckily, there’s a very small portion of the building in this back corner that we recently did a build out in with the city and everything and all the proper code requirements, so that area may have been preserved.”
Shangra-La’s Director of Cultivation was first from the store to arrive on scene. According to Cameron, their director arrived at the building shortly before 5 a.m. and went to the Coffee Cup gas station next door before his shift started at 6 a.m. When he arrived, he noticed the front doors blown out and the fire department in the parking lot.
Cannabis is unfortunately very hard to ensure, because it’s not a federally legal crop, so it works differently than hail or storm insurance.
And Cameron said only bigger cultivation centers, typically three times the size of Shangri-La, take on the extra cost for their product.
“There’s kind of a risk reward when it comes to insuring these crops,” Cameron said. “We’re going to focus most on our equipment coverages.”
Although their product and interior building was deemed a total loss, Cameron said they hope to eventually get back up and running. But with most of the product damages going uninsured and without a new grow facility, that will take awhile.
Even if we start rebuilding, I don’t imagine Shangri-La’s gonna go away. But cannabis is a very difficult thing to ensure.
“I mean, even if we had a place to start rebuilding today, it’d be six months before we would be selling Shangri-La products again,” Cameron said. “We are working with the state though, to keep our active license.”
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