Crews are battling a fire at a building in downtown Sacramento on Thursday morning.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. —
Two firefighters were sent to the hospital Thursday morning after a fire in a busy part of downtown that posed a challenge for crews, the Sacramento Fire Department said.
A partially abandoned building on J and 8th streets caught fire just after 4 a.m., and the fire department said it called a third alarm, which means sending a large amount of personnel and equipment to battle the fire.
But Sacramento Fire Department spokesperson Justin Sylvia said the issue with this fire is that they didn’t know where it was. Heavy, “cold” smoke poured from the second floor of the building, and KCRA 3’s Mike TeSelle observed crews breaking windows to access the building.
Sylvia explained that because the building was partially abandoned, there were holes inside, “which makes it challenging because now you have the potential for firefighters to fall through those holes.”
While there were no significant injuries, the fire department said two firefighters were sent to the hospital for symptoms of exhaustion.
There was also a woman on the second floor of the building who had just begun a six-hour livestream on an online auction site. Because firefighters flooded the stairwell in the process of extinguishing the fire, they had to use a ladder to rescue her from the outside.
“I went in to try to open my office door, and the whole hallway there was just filled with thick smoke—no way out that way,” Lydia Lesnyakov said. “I opened the window and sat on the ledge and was yelling for them to get over here.”
Sacramento Regional Transit said that, because of the situation, Gold Line service is disrupted between 8th and H streets, and 7th and Capitol Avenue. There is a bus bridge in effect for those streets.
While there are still closures in the area, two lanes of J Street reopened around 7:15 a.m.
The cause of the fire is unknown.
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