Russ Lane Fire
Around 12:30 this morning I awoke to my fire pager going off. Fully involved structure fire was the call. That will get you from sleeping to wide awake in 2 seconds. Russ Lane is off of Centerville road towards the beach, and halfway to the fire we could see it lighting up the sky. Not a good sign. (In fact one firefighter who was responding from Fortuna noted that he could see it from Waddington, which is about 7-8 miles away.
At first arrival it looked like it would be a defensive fire, but we did end up proceeding with an interior attack. I went in the front on a hoseline to check out the upstairs and just as we were backing down with the hose as we didn’t see any fire upstairs, it started breaking through the wall. We continued fighting the fire for several hours and finally got the flames out. Mopup proceeded and around 3:30 I was finally stepping out of my turnouts back at the fire hall.
Just then an urgent call came over to return as the fire had rekindled up in the attic. Returning to the scene we found flames shooting out the attic vent and roof. We got it out again about an hour later, and after cleaning and racking hose a second time, most of us got home about 5:30 or 6:00. There were a lot of very tired firefighters in town that day, but given what the house looked like when we arrived, we were all very proud that we saved as much of the structure as we did. The house which used to be a Victorian mansion survived a previous fire and was sort of remodeled in the Craftsman style, but it still had traces of its original architecture. It looks pretty intact from the front, but the fire started in back, probably from an outbuilding that was storing about 3 cords of firewood.