By Brad Branan
The Fresno Bee
Copyright 2007 McClatchy Newspapers, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
CLOVIS, Calif. — Three fires in about an hour Tuesday caused as much structure damage as Clovis recorded in all of 2005 and exposed the limits of the city’s fire department, according to fire officials and department records.
It is rare to have so many of the city’s structures catch fire in such a short period of time, said Clovis Fire Chief Mark Aston.
And it limited what the city could do to respond to an apartment fire that took the life of Craig Cook, a 45-year-old paraplegic who was trapped inside, Aston said.
Arson has been ruled out as a cause of the two largest fires, involving a home at 1807 Polson Ave. and an apartment complex at 275 W. Alamos Ave., Clovis fire officials said Wednesday.
The third fire, reported an hour and five minutes after the first one, was contained to an apartment air conditioner unit at 2740 Lind Ave.
Officials are still trying to determine whether the apartment fire was the result of electrical or accidental causes, and whether Cook died as a result of smoke inhalation or heat.
Aston said he didn’t know whether Cook’s disability prevented him from escaping.
The fire caused $1.2 million in damage.
Ten residents whose units were destroyed are receiving shelter through the American Red Cross.
The house fire on Polson Avenue, which caused $550,000 in damage, appears to be accidental, fire officials said. No one was injured.
Clovis reported $1.28 million in structure damage as a result of fires in 2005, city records show. In 2004, the city reported $2.1 million in fire damage to structures.
Last year, the total was $3 million.
A major house fire requires the presence of every on-duty Clovis firefighter, Aston said, forcing the city to rely on other fire departments to provide the first response if a second building fire occurs in the city.
That “worst-case scenario” occurred Tuesday.
Summoned to the house fire at 6:05 p.m., Clovis responded with five engines and 15 firefighters -- everyone who was on duty.
Eight minutes later, the department received a call for a fire at the Alamos Avenue apartment complex. With Clovis’ on-duty fire crews already tied up, the Fresno Fire Department was dispatched. Clovis also called back off-duty firefighters to help.
Clovis could have arrived at the apartment complex within four minutes if it hadn’t been busy with the house fire, Aston said.
The Fresno Fire Department took 13 minutes to respond to the apartment complex, he said. While Fresno’s response was “excellent,” it took longer than Clovis would have taken simply because Fresno had to travel farther, Aston said.
A quicker response would have reduced the amount of damage at the apartment complex, but it probably wouldn’t have saved Cook’s life in the fast-moving fire, Aston said.
Fresno Fire Chief Randy Bruegman also called his department’s response “excellent.”
Clovis and Fresno will improve joint responses to fires and other emergencies today, when Clovis starts using the same dispatch center as Fresno, Bruegman and Aston said.
Clovis agreed to switch its dispatch services to the county communications center in southeast Fresno earlier this year. Fresno made the change last year.
Having the same dispatch center will eliminate up to one minute of delay when dispatchers from the two cities had to contact one another, Aston said. He said the new system would have cut about a minute from the response to Tuesday’s fatal fire.
Having the same dispatch center also will allow the departments to have a “boundary drop” in which they combine personnel for emergencies in areas close to both cities, Bruegman said. A working group will be appointed shortly to come up with a plan for shared emergency responses, an effort that was under way before Tuesday’s fire, he said.