Three-Alarm San Francisco High-Rise Fire Injures Four

A large fire broke out at a high-rise apartment building near the water front in San Francisco's Financial District at about 1:20 a.m. Friday morning.

A video posted to twitter by the San Francisco fire department showed roaring flames about halfway up the Gateway apartment complex's east tower at 440 Davis Court.

Four people were injured, according to Jonathan Baxter, a spokesman for the fire department. Two were transported to nearby hospitals and two were evaluated by paramedics and released at the scene. All were in "good condition." Baxter said.

Another building at the Gateway complex also caught fire in 2018, raising questions at the time about the building's sprinkler system. The 2018 fire began on the 12th floor. Friday's fire began on the 11th floor, according to fire officials.

Firefighters stopped the blaze's forward progress shortly before 2:30 a.m. Friday, about an hour after firefighters first responded. A long streak of heavy scorch marks were visible on the building's south side, which faces Washington Street and the smell of smoke lingered in the air. One balcony appeared to have partially collapsed.

It wasn't immediately clear how many people were displaced by the fire, but the building was being repopulated shortly before 4 a.m. Twenty-two units on the 11th floor and one unit on the 12th floor were uninhabitable, according to the fire department.

Angela Johnston was sound asleep in her apartment when a fire alarm woke her up after 1a.m. She put on her clothes, grabbed her elderly dog, Kippy, and evacuated with other residents. Johnston said she tried knocking on her neighbor's door but didn't hear an answer.

"It definitely was unexpected," Johnston said. "I'm just hoping a lot of people make it out OK. There's a lot of elderly people who lived in my building."

When Alexis Calimeris was looking for an apartment in a high-rise apartment complex earlier this summer, she know she wanted to live on one of the lower floors — just in case a fire broke out and she needed to evacuate.

Early Friday morning, she was glad she picked the sixth floor.

About 1:15am, she was awoken by the sound of a fire alarm at the Gateway apartment complex. She only had time to grab her coat and her mask before needing to evacuate.

"The mask is part of the evacuation kit now, for sure," she said. "Which is hard when you're woken up from a very deep sleep."

Dozens of other residents gathered outside the scorched apartment building.

The Gateway apartment complex caught fire in 2018, an incident that raised questions at the time about the building's sprinkler system Built in 1965, the 22-story high-rise was required to have fire sprinklers only in storage areas and the garbage chute. It wasn't immediately clear whether sprinklers had been installed since the 2018 fire.

Greystar Real Estate Partners, the company that owns the Gateway, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The fire bookended a hectic week for Alex Darden. On Wednesday, his apartment in a different building at the complex flooded. He was given a temporary apartment on the eighth floor of a different building.

He lived there for two days before having to evacuate after the building caught fire.

As Darden stood outside, looking up toward the scorched building, he immediately thought of everything he left behind.

"It's always interesting," he said. "Every time a fire alarm goes off you always want to take your essentials — but then you worry about what you leave behind." Darden said it pained him to say that he was worrying about his work laptop.

But he also did not forget his mask.

"That's kind of the standard of today," he said. "Making sure I got my wallet, keys — and my mask."

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