[UPDATED] Broadway Fire Estimated to Have Caused Total Destruction of Building and Equipment–$750,000 Loss
[Photo by Humboldt Bay Fire]
[Updated press release below]
At 9:34 P.M. Humboldt Bay Fire units, including 3 engines, a ladder truck, and four duty chiefs were dispatched to a reported structure fire in a vacant commercial building on the 3500 block of Broadway road. The first responding engine 8112 reported seeing heavy smoke from the roof of the structure. A commercial second alarm was requested and four mutual aid units responded with one Arcata unit going to the scene, they were staged then later released from scene. Loleta, Somoa, and Blue Lake provided station coverage.
The first arriving unit reported a working fire in a commercial structure. They passed command to the incoming Battalion Chief. 8112 secured water supply and set up for a offensive fire attack. After fire was visible from the roof fire attack was switched to defensive fire operations. Truck 8181 was the second arriving unit and was also assigned fire attack. After two hours of defensive fire actions and consulting with city officials it was determined that the building was deemed to be unsafe, and demolition of the building was necessary.
Fire crews remained on scene for approximately five and a half hours to complete extinguishment and facilitate demolition of the building.
After investigation it was determined that the cause of the fire was transient activity. PG&E was notified, there was no gas or power going to the building. There was a gas line near by that PG&E capped.
Damage was estimated at $2,000,000 with the building and all equipment a total loss.
There were no injuries to fire personnel on scene nor civilian injuries. Humboldt Bay Fire would like to thank its allied partners for their assistance with coverage during this incident. Arcata Fire Protection District, Samoa Fire District, Loleta Fire District, and Blue Lake Fire District helped to ensure the safety of the HBF community while our resources were committed. Also we would like to thank PG&E, EPD, Eureka public works, City Ambulance, and Mercer Fraser for providing equipment and personnel for
demolition.At 9:34 P.M. Humboldt Bay Fire units, including 3 engines, a ladder truck, and two duty chiefs were dispatched to a reported structure fire in a vacant commercial building on the 3500 block of Broadway street. The first responding engine reported seeing heavy smoke from the roof of the structure. A commercial second alarm was requested and four mutual aid units responded. Loleta, Samoa, and Blue Lake provided station coverage.
The first arriving unit reported a working fire in a commercial structure. They secured a water supply and set up for an interior fire attack. After fire was visible from the roof, fire attack was switched to exterior fire operations. The second arriving unit and was also assigned fire attack. After two hours of defensive fire operations and consulting with city officials it was determined that the building was deemed to be unsafe, and demolition of the building was necessary.
Fire crews remained on scene for approximately five and a half hours to complete extinguishment and facilitate demolition of the building.
After investigation it was determined that the cause of the fire was transient activity. PG&E was notified, there was no gas or power going to the building. There was a gas line nearby that PG&E capped.
Damage was estimated at $750,000 with the building being a total loss. There were no injuries to civilian or fire personnel on scene. Humboldt Bay Fire would like to thank its allied partners for their assistance with coverage during this incident. Arcata Fire Protection District, Samoa Fire District, Loleta Fire District, and Blue Lake Fire District helped to ensure the safety of the HBF community while our resources were committed.
Also we would like to thank PG&E, EPD, Eureka public works, City Ambulance, and Mercer Fraser for providing equipment and personnel for demolition.
Earlier: Fire at ‘Vacant Broadway Billiards’ Building in Eureka
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Magic eight ball says, build a coffee stand.
To Ed thyssen below: check it out, humans have the right to exist, even poor ones. If you don’t want homeless people, build some bloody housing. It’s not a complex problem. 🙄
You really going full scrooge on us with the work camps? Dude. That some serious deep evil right there.
Rest in peace Ricos. 🙏
What do the libs, lefties, social justice warriors & assorted have to say about the transient activity? What do they see as the end point in this? Give the bums more money and handouts so they can continue to buy more drugs? Who is going to provide the money? I — as a taxpayer — have no desire to subsidize the drug habits of weak and defective people.
On the other hand, rousting them does little good and is a temporary solution at best. The bums simply go elsewhere & will soon return to their old habitat.
The only permanent — and humane — solution is an archipelago of work camps for these people. These would provide housing, food and medical care — and most importantly — an opportunity for useful, productive work. These would be structured of course so the occupants couldnt access drugs or alcohol and would be provided firm but humane guidance in their lives and work. If this were carefully structured, the bums would turn into useful, productive people performing useful tasks and producing various goods. They could grow their own food and provide enough for sale, the profits of which would support their facilities.
There will be arguments against this and some SJW may even call me some pejorative insult, which I will likely take as a compliment. I ask you this — is my plan any less humane than allowing these people to live in drug infested squalor with no hope, no goals, no purpose whatsoever in their lives?
Vagrants will cause massive property damage and merely move on, if we let them.
Misplaced Compassion people think this is what we must accept. Something about “human dignity” and “freedom of choice” and ” human rights” and ” caring” gets dysfunctionally mixed up in their heads and so we end up with THIS being our result that we should accept. I call bullshit on that….
Vagrants have no dignity and could care less about us. Work camps are a waste of money because vagrants do not want to work.
That’s one solution. Mine would be edited or deleted.
But it was only a movie!
The last sentence of your comment rings true. Almost anything is more humane than letting people drug themselves into oblivion and severe mental illness.
I am sure The Left has got this one wrong; giving people homes to live in, who are severely drug addicted and mentally unstable, is not fixing the issue.
I am a lifelong Democrat, for what it’s worth.
Thanks for saying this. Many of us have left that party over their modern misrepresentations of what “compassion” really means….
Why are you making this political? It is everyone’s problem.
Have you heard of John Shelter? He is organizes groups of people(houseless) to do all sorts of jobs. He is a private citizen and I think he’s great!
Might be a coincidence but this might of been the effect of evicting all the homeless out of their camps earlier in the week.
ya think?
Which is why they should have been encouraged to move far out of city limits, altogether.
“Go west, young man!” (Or woman)
so make it somebody else’s problem? This problem is not going to go away in any sense, literal or figurative. Until we stop fussing about who’s good and who’s bad, and start seriously housing people, we are ALL going to suffer from it. So get over the compassion v. hardnose debate, and let’s deal with this realistically. I certainly would support sober work camps; I’m in favor of as much sobriety and responsibility as we can muster — but those who remain unsober and irresponsible still need to be housed if we are ever going to make any headway on making our community — or any community — a better place for all of us.
It is not going to be resolved by enabling their behavior.
It was not folks from that camp. Those folks hadnt been seen on that side of town until last night. It was the usual faces at the time of the fire.
This shit was going on long before that clearing and will continue to go on long after this as long as the county continues to let it happen.
Wait a minute, the old boiler room is a $2M dollar loss??!
Letitia James may want to investigate how someone arrived at that number…
Oh wait, wrong state, and wrong moron as AG.
Seen real estate prices lately? It’s crazy yeah!
An updated press release with a much lower number was released yesterday and we did not see it. We’ve corrected the information.
Man I used to have fun in that building
Yes John is a wonderful man does wonderful work I’ve known him for quite a few years now If we had more people like him out there there would be less problems and less homeless
Some extremely good points and opinions below. I think Ed Thyssen brings up a solid perspective and a “reality” based one. Yea, it is going to be hard for some to stomach, but in the end doing something with tangible affect for our community is the only way to go.
We can not continue down this same path and expect things to be different. We need to place these people into some sort of facility where they can no longer be a danger to our community (lives, businesses, crime, etc.) and no longer a danger to themselves.
End of story, it needs to be done, it has to be done if we are going to advance and if we want tourism to replace industry.
Does anyone know the actual address of this building ?