FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) — Over the past couple of months, Action News has been on the scene of several vacant building fires across the city of Fresno.
“We are seeing about the normal amount of vacant structure fires a year to date. We’ve had 76,” Fresno Fire Department Deputy Fire Marshal Jay Tracy said.
Two of those blazes happened within the last week.
Flames took over a vacant home near the Tower District on College Ave and Elizabeth St on Monday morning.
Investigators say it’s too early to determine a cause.
Last Wednesday, another fire ripped through the former Jeb’s Blueberry Hill on Blackstone Ave in Central Fresno.
“We do believe there is arson involved in that one,” Tracy stated.
Last month, Fresno firefighters found a vacant southwest Fresno home up in flames near C and Mono Streets.
The very next day, an empty southeast Fresno home near Balch and Barton Avenues was destroyed by a fire.
While the cause of those blazes has not been determined, Fresno Fire says many vacant building fires are caused by people.
“Most often times, they are human-involved, meaning somebody could have started a fire, not actually being malicious, but could’ve started, say a warming fire or something of that nature and then the fire got out of control,” Tracy explained.
Fresno Fire says vacant structures like these are typically empty for longer periods of time before going up in flames, so it’s important for owners and neighbors to be on alert.
“We do encourage the public to file a report on a structure that has someone in there that maybe shouldn’t be in there that they know is to be vacant,” he said.
The fire department does not expect to see an uptick in these fires as we close out the year.
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