FIRE!!!!

Working on a few emails from home in the city I start hearing explosions. I know they aren’t gun shots they were far too loud, sounded more like rocket shells going off. I look out the window and just a couple of blocks away there is a huge amount of smoke and flames coming from a close building. Curiosity getting the best of me I have to check it out.

I will not hold you in suspense, it turns out a car repair shop had a small fire which spread to their oxygen and acetyl tanks. Those were what made the explosions. Now this was my first time witnessing a major fire inside the city directly adjacent to major residential complexes. The car repair shop was actually the first floor of the complex which of course caused it to spread to the apartments above. Standing about a block away with residents the horror fear and anguish was sobering. People were crying and screaming and there was just quite a bit of emotion, all of it of course captured by the news media that was quick to show up.

Also to my surprise was the sheer number of responders that are required to show up to even a minor event such as this. Well of course you have the fire department, in this case roughly 9 engine companies 5 ladder companies, 2 heavy rescue trucks and a battalion chief (from what I could see). Then you have the police department, in this case quite a bit of crowd and traffic control was necessary as it was adjacent to a major highway exit and residential street. Probably about 60 officers closing off around 2 blocks on all side. Then of course you need to have PG&E to ensure there are no power or further gas explosions around the area, maybe 7 of those trucks showed up. Based on the sheer amount of water being used and of course dumped flooding is always a concern so the Water Department was also present. Various city officials and a couple of other unknown agencies also came, all told roughly 200 responders for a single fire. Keeping in mind that this is at a time where there are no other events going on and it is a beautiful fall day, I can now begin to imagine the vast taxing of the emergency system if a larger scale incident would have happen such as earthquake, city wide black out etc. I would love to say everything went smoothly but even on something so limited there was still major communication flaws with none of the agencies being able to communicate with each and there was a lot of individuals running around trying to get or give information.

We need to work on this!