Features

Fire Log

By Richard Brenneman
Friday January 05, 2007

Apartment fires—one caused by a forgotten pan, the other by a forgotten cigarette—ruined the holiday plans of several Berkeley residents, reports Berkeley Fire Marshal Gil Dong. 

A family who lives in an apartment in the 1400 block of 8th Street got a very rude awakening at 3:17 Christmas morning. 

Oil in a frying pan left on a hot stove had caught fire, and the flames spread through the kitchen, causing an estimated $12,000 in damage before firefighters extinguished them. 

The family was forced to spend the holiday away from home. 

The second fire came at 9:46 p.m. on New Year’s Eve, when a cigarette left on a mattress in an apartment in the 3200 block of Adeline Street set the bed ablaze. 

Automatic sprinklers contained the resulting flames, but not before they’d done an estimated $10,000 in damage and sent the apartment’s lone occupant to the emergency room for treatment of smoke inhalation, Dong said.