{"id":313299,"date":"2026-05-13T07:25:36","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T07:25:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/313299\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T07:25:36","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T07:25:36","slug":"2-people-killed-in-utility-vault-fire-in-downtown-fresno-identified-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/313299\/","title":{"rendered":"2 people killed in utility vault fire in Downtown Fresno identified"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The two people who died after a fire in a bridge utility vault in Downtown Fresno have been identified as 57-year-old Johnny Torres and 50-year-old Antonio Corona.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The fire happened just before 8:30 a.m. Monday at Fresno and H streets.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Investigators say several people from the unhoused community were seen coming in and out of the area shortly before the smoke was first reported.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Firefighters had to coordinate with PG&amp;E to shut off the power to nearly 600 customers before entering the utility vault to try to put out the blaze.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Once inside, they began a primary search and found one of the victims&#8217; bodies.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">&#8220;They pulled the person out, the patient was deceased and as they continued to go back inside to conduct a primary search, they found another victim who was also deceased,&#8221; says Fresno Fire Chief Billy Alcorn.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Chief Alcorn says it appeared that the unhoused were trying to live in the vault and may have gained access by digging through the side of the bridge.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The utility vault serves as a main distribution center to the downtown area.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The two people who died after a fire in a bridge utility vault in Downtown Fresno have been&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":313300,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[131176,17774,112,131178,114,113,131177,130357],"class_list":["post-313299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fresno","tag-antonio-corona","tag-downtown-fresno","tag-fresno","tag-fresno-fire-chief-billy","tag-fresno-headlines","tag-fresno-news","tag-johnny-torres","tag-utility-vault"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313299","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=313299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313299\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/313300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}