At 5:03 pm Sunday, East Contra Costa Fire Protection District crews responded to a residential structure fire on Sandmound Drive in Oakley. Upon arrival, Engine 94 observed a large fire blowing out of the side window of the structure along with power lines on fire.
Engine 94 went defensive to protect nearby structures until additional crews arrived on scene. Upon arrival of Engine 93, both crews went offensive to attack the fire coming from a fully involved garage. When Engine 54 arrived, they entered through the side door to conduct a primary search and checked for extensions into the living area. Engine 52 arrived and immediately were stationed in the rear of the structure where they extinguished a vehicle and exterior fire.
According to ECCFPD, the fire was limited to two garages where all contents were destroyed. There was also heavy smoke damage to the living area of the home. There was also exposure damage to a neighboring home.
The fire caused an estimated $150,000 in damages with no injuries. The cause of the fire is still under investigation.
Editors Notes:
- Given the close proximity to neighboring structures, crews did an amazing job in limiting this fire to the house of origin.
- It should also be noted that due to multiple other fires in Antioch, Engine 52 and Engine 93 were called for an assist to CONFIRE but were both cancelled. Engine 52 was responding to a vegetation fire on Wexler Peak Way in Antioch (4:12pm) where CONFIRE was on scene for nearly 2-hours while Engine 93 was called to a kitchen fire on D Street (4:22 pm) where crews were on scene for just over 2-hours. With Engine 93 the second due engine to Sandmound, there is no telling how big this fire may have gotten with assistance coming from over the hill in Concord.
Photo of residential fire with flames courtesy of Robbert Goddard
9 comments
I love this site, but please just report on what happened, not that Engine 52 and 93 were on prior incidents and were nearly not available. They were on this call so your opinion is somewhat false.
William, he was putting in perspective the workload and timing of earlier calls on this incident. This is important to our community, because of recent cuts in service and pending attempts to improve the fire and life safety services in the community. All is important information that is not always available to the community in the mainstream media.
William,
I think you will see more and more of this type article as we get closer to the new tax vote.
John,
ECT has been posting “this type” of article all along. Keep up buddy. It really isn’t that hard to follow.
p.s. William, What I think you should expect is to see more of “ECV’sbrother” aka; Johnny Knightsen’s anti tax and anti fire department rhetoric as we get closer to a possible measure. John can be very one dimensional and easily confused by things most of us call “facts”.
I respectfully disagree. I thought it was noteworthy to know what was happening prior to the fire call. I think that it is assumed there is always an Engine in their assigned Station waiting for a call.
First off, great photographs again. In response to William, I don’t see anything wrong with him educating the public on how fire service works with a limited amount of engines. At some point, there will be multiple incidents at one time with no engines available. It will happen, thankfully yesterday it did not.
I was listening to the scanner and both ECCFP and Con Fire were busy last evening. One call after another. If anything, people need to be made aware of how stretched resources are. The time it took to get enough resources out there was very very telling. If there had been someone in that garage that needed rescue or medical attention……… Here is something that my husband noted- Every Oakley police and SO unit rolled code 3 out there beating the fire dept. For quite a while, there were more Police Officers/Sheriff Deputies on scene than fire fighters
I was there and there was somthing that went on but not reported. When the first two engines arrived they didnt do anything at all for ten minutes. The crowd was asking them why don’t you put the fire out and they said they couldnt do anything until the fire chief got there and told them to go ahead. By thr time they startrd to put water on it the fire was ,3 times as big. Had they started when they first got there the fire would have only burnt one garage. Why do they let the fire burn on like that on some and not others?
@ John
You might of missed the part that said there was DOWN POWER LINES
meaning: Live Lines = Electrocution. Hope your not trying to miss lead people and make the fire department look bad.
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