Crews from several agencies battled a number of fires across the Bay Area Saturday. This happening as many people are bracing for California’s most vulnerable months. Stephanie Magallon reports.
Crews from several agencies battled a number of fires across the Bay Area Saturday.
One of the fires happened at a home in Bethel Island early Saturday morning. Brooke Logan told NBC Bay Area that she was home at the time of the fire.
“I jumped off the back porch,” she said.
Neighbors started hosing down what they could.
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Despite the fact, the home was right next to a fire station, the building has been empty for years due to a lack of funding.
Residents told NBC Bay Area that the station was set to reopen Wednesday, fully staffed.
“With that station 55, they would have got a good stop, but uh it was a sad sight to see,” said Aaron Peters, who lives in the neighborhood.
Cal Fire Scott Valencia talked about challenges in Bethel Island Saturday.
“Out here in Bethel Island, the biggest challenge is that we do not have a continuous water supply. We need to use water tenders to shuttle water back and forth. The distance the units have to travel to get out here is significance as well,” he said.
Officials said no one was hurt and the empty fire station will finally open on Jun. 1.
“That’ll be a good thing for us out here,” Peters said.
In Bay Point, about 220 acres were burnt after a homeless encampment went up in flames.
Time lapse video showed how winds helped spread onto dry grass. Con Fire said the fire was fully contained, with no injuries and no structures damaged.
There were also two fires that happened in San Jose Saturday. One occurred at a recycling center, and another fire occurred at a home.
All of the incidents happened at the same time as a one-of-a kind festival in San Rafael, which is dedicated to getting Marin County residents ready for a long and arduous fire season.
“We are all becoming all too aware of the dangers. We don’t have to look far to our north and south to see what will happen if we don’t get ready,” said Meg Mccabe, Fire Safe Marin’s director of programming.
The event called “Ember Stomp!" was held at the Marin Civic Center with responders, landscapers, environmentalists and even vendors were selling fire resistant material.
“Most people think of fires coming as a big wall of flames and there’s nothing we can do but evacuate and get out, that’s not really the case, most homes burn because of embers flying away from the wildfire and we can stop the embers from catching fire and spreading to our homes and that’s what this festival is about,” McCabe said.
These incidents happening as everyone is bracing ahead of California’s most vulnerable months due to wildfires.
