Yesterday afternoon I had just sat down for Coffee at Peet’s on J Street with two of our Battalion Chiefs when the call came in for the apartment fire on H Street. The two Chiefs and I responded and were on scene right after the first arriving fire company. Heavy fire was engulfing the upper floor of the Victorian building. It was a good thing that our Firefighters were able to arrive on scene in about two minutes!

A second alarm was requested and our Firefighters went to work protecting the two adjacent buildings and attacking the main body of the fire. It took a few minutes but our crews were able to knock down the fire and prevent it from spreading to the adjacent buildings and to the lower floors of the Victorian.

Victorian style buildings as well as many of the older style construction that we see in the downtown area of Sacramento, make our job as Firefighters a little more difficult. A lot of these buildings are over 100 years old and many are built with what we call “balloon” construction. That means that the walls of the building run continuous from the ground to the attic with no fire breaks inside the walls. Basically you have a chimney from the basement to the attic and the fire spreads very fast. Fortunately, over time the building codes have changed and this type of construction is not allowed anymore. Another issue we face in the downtown area is how close these old buildings are to one another.

I get questions all of the time about why we send so many Firefighters to the downtown area on a fire. In the City a typical first alarm assignment for a structure fire is to send three Fire Engines, Two Fire Trucks, (Engines carry hose, water and have the pump, and the Trucks have the big ladder on top and carry the rescue equipment.) one Medic, (Ambulance) and two Battalion Chiefs. On all structure assignments downtown we send five Engines, three Trucks, two Medics, three Battalion Chiefs, and the EMS Captain. As you can see that is a lot of manpower and equipment! We have learned over time that it is better to send a lot of resources on downtown responses, and if they are not needed, we can easily turn them back!

Our Firefighters did a great job on this fire! This fire could have easily destroyed the entire building as well as the next door units. The Firefighters who work for you take their job very serious and we constantly train and do our best to be prepared for fires like this and for the every other type of the 70,000 plus calls we have every year!

The Sacramento Fire Department is one of the nation’s busiest Fire Departments. Fortunately we do not have these types of fires every day; however we typically have one or two structure fires each and every day somewhere in the City. We appreciate the support and comments we received yesterday from the fire victims and the people who were watching the fire. Our job can be very difficult at times, but all of us love doing it and we love serving this City.