Four-alarm fire rips through central Fresno neighborhood

A four-alarm fire destroyed one home and damaged four other buildings Tuesday afternoon in a central Fresno neighborhood just south of Fresno City College. Investigators are trying to determine if arson was involved. 

The fire was initially reported as a palm tree fire about 4 p.m. But when crews arrived they found several fires had erupted in the area of Floradora Avenue and Calaveras Street, said Fire Department spokesman Pete Martinez. Firefighters found an outbuilding between two homes fully engulfed in flames.

Fire crews confronted four separate fire locations within the first 10 to 15 minutes, prompting a four-alarm response that drew fire crews from several neighboring cities, he said. 

Fresno Fire Chief Kerri Donis said windy conditions caused the blaze to spread from the burning home to two adjacent buildings and eventually to a third on the west side of Calaveras. The home at 1365 N. Calaveras St. was destroyed. Three people were displaced.

Ashes from the fires jumped across the street to several buildings on the east side of Calaveras, but damage was minimal, Donis said. No one was injured. 

Firefighters were fighting a small, separate fire just down the street. Donis said damage from this fire appears to be minimal.

Eric Gordon, 47, who was staying with a friend at one of the homes, was napping when the home caught fire.

“I was in the front of the house and my friend wakes me up and I just got out,” Gordon said. “It was the back garage that caught first and then it just spiraled.”

David Fuentes, 32, lives next door to where the fire started. He heard his dogs going hysterical and when he looked outside the garage next door was engulfed in flame, his fence was on fire, and the fire was heading towards his daughter’s room.

“I grabbed my wife, my daughter, my son, the pets and a few family pictures and got out,” he said.

More than 50 firefighters worked in shifts of 20 or 30 minutes to battle the fire. Heat safety regulations require each to take breaks after that amount of time.

With temperatures hitting 97, fire crews were taxed by the heat. The Fire Department called in a strike team — the equivalent of a six-alarm fire — drawing fire agencies from Sanger, Selma, Orange Cove, Reedley and Clovis, said Martinez, the fire department spokesman. The department quit responding to medical aid calls. 

“We utilize strike teams for bigger fires — grass fires — but its very rare we call in a strike team for a residential fire in Fresno,” he said.

A fire investigator was called out to the scene. Donis said the cause of the outbuilding fire is possibly arson.

The fire knocked out power and cable utilities to the neighborhood. 

Bryan Byrd, Comcast’s California communications director, said that the company’s cable and Internet services were being affected by the fire because a utility pole with some of its equipment was burned.

Byrd said he didn’t know how many customers were being affected by the outage, “but it appears to be a considerable number.” He said Comcast repair crews cannot take steps to restore service until after firefighters had completed their chores and Pacific Gas & Electric Co. restores power. PG&E’s outage map indicated 30 customers were without power. 

The Calaveras Street fire was the latest in a string of blazes that have kept heat-weary firefighters scrambling. Martinez said the volume of three-alarm fires over the last several days is unheard of. 

Earlier Tuesday morning, fire crews were called to a three-alarm commercial fire near Roosevelt High School at Mojica Produce on the northeast corner of the intersection. Fire Department spokesman Pete Martinez said firefighters arrived about 3:30 a.m. to find heavy smoke in the back of the building. They went through the rear of the structure to fight the fire, which spread to a beauty salon next door, where it caused minor damage.

Monday night, a fire in a church bus at Church and Maple avenues near Calwa spread to an adjacent church and took the life of a man who was living inside the bus. That fire appeared to be accidental, fire officials said. Earlier in the day, crews battled two large house fires in southeast Fresno.

And on Sunday, a three-alarm fire broke out at a restaurant supply business on Van Ness Avenue east of Highway 41 about the same time as crews responded to a fire at a grain silo near the city’s south edge.

This story was originally published June 16, 2015 at 4:24 PM with the headline "Four-alarm fire rips through central Fresno neighborhood."