FRESNO, Calif. (FOX26) \u2014 Tonight, a person was hospitalized after a house fire broke out in Fresno just hours ago. <\/p>\n
Fire crews responded to reports of flames and heavy smoke near Fulton and Belmont streets. A man who rents an upstairs back room said he opened his door to find flames and was forced to crawl out a window onto a side ledge. He then climbed down a ladder that had been set up for roof repairs. He said he does not know what caused the fire. <\/p>\n
Firefighters also rescued an elderly person from the home, who was taken to the hospital by an ambulance. <\/p>\n
“The house is just engulfed in flames,” said witness Loretta Varela. <\/p>\n
Witnesses reported hearing a loud popping sound before the fire intensified. <\/p>\n
“It was really strong,” said Genaro Hernandez. “We couldn’t do much.”<\/p>\n
Hernandez said neighbors tried to reach the second floor using a ladder but were driven back by smoke. <\/p>\n
“We’re trying to go upstairs with a ladder. We started breaking the window and heard smoke, so we all got off,” Hernandez said. <\/p>\n
Others nearby said they heard screaming as residents rushed to escape.<\/p>\n
“She told me, ‘Get up and get dressed. the house is on fire,” Varela said. “I ran out, and the house was just getting bigger. People were coming outside, and we didn’t know what was going on. It was scary.”<\/p>\n
More than 50 firefighters responded to the scene. <\/p>\n
“They had a group of firefighters trying to gain access simultaneously while other firefighters were attacking the fire and trying to extinguish it,” said Fresno Fire Department PIO Josh Sellers. <\/p>\n
The cause of the fire remains under investigation. The condition of the elderly person who was rescued has not yet been released.<\/p>\n
Witnesses lined the streets as firefighters worked, saying they know who lives in the home and showed their concern and support for the resident. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FRESNO, Calif. (FOX26) \u2014 Tonight, a person was hospitalized after a house fire broke out in Fresno just…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":149685,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[112,114,113],"class_list":{"0":"post-149684","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fresno","8":"tag-fresno","9":"tag-fresno-headlines","10":"tag-fresno-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149684\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/149685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}