Solar panel fire at Grainger facility near Okolona
Sept 2026Published 28 Sept 2026
- Where
- Grainger Industrial Supply building, 8700 block of Minor Lane near Okolona in south Louisville
- What
- A solar panel on the roof caught fire
- Injuries
- Four firefighters with heat exhaustion. No employee injuries reported
- Response
- Took about two hours to bring under control
- Cause
- Not stated
What happened
A solar panel on the roof of the Grainger Industrial Supply building, in the 8700 block of Minor Lane near Okolona in south Louisville, caught fire on Wednesday. The fire was reported just before 3 p.m. and took about two hours to bring under control. Video showed one of 12 sections of the rooftop solar panels scorched. The building is nearly 1.5 million square feet. Four firefighters went down with heat exhaustion. No employee injuries were reported. The cause of the panel fire was not stated.
Contributing factors
The cause of the solar panel fire was not reported. During the response, firefighters described strong sun on the roof, heavy protective gear and respirators as conditions that made the work harder and led to heat exhaustion.
Lessons learned
- A fire in rooftop solar on a very large industrial roof can take hours to control, so access, water supply and crew rotation should be planned before an incident.
- Heat stress is a foreseeable risk for crews working in full gear on an exposed roof in strong sun, and relief arrangements should be part of the response plan.
- Scorching of one section does not by itself establish why the fire started; operators should preserve the affected equipment and await a stated cause before changing procedures.
Not yet known
- Cause of the panel fire
- Age and model of the solar panels
- Cost of damage and downtime
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Source
Published 2026-09-28. Written from public reporting. Descriptive, not investigative. See the data accuracy disclaimer.