CA Station Catches Fire While Firefighters on Call

OCEANSIDE, CA—An Oceanside fire station that caught fire as its crew was out on a call Tuesday morning suffered extensive damage to its living quarters and will need to be temporarily closed until repairs are made, city officials said.

Firefighters from Station 3, located on Oceanside Boulevard near El Camino Real, were away on a call when a city maintenance worker noticed smoke coming from the station around 10 a.m., said Oceanside Fire Chief Joe Ward.

Firefighters from two nearby stations responded to the call and put out the flames. No one was injured.

The blaze apparently started in a second-floor area where the station’s bedrooms, kitchen and day room are located. Work was done on the station’s heating and air conditioning unit earlier in the day, but it wasn’t immediately known if that contributed to the fire, which remains under investigation.

The fire was knocked down in less than 15 minutes.

“It didn’t go through the roof, it didn’t get into the attic space. It stayed within the living quarters but the smoke damage basically went throughout the whole entire station,” Ward said, adding he didn’t have an estimate of how much it would cost to make repairs. The building is more than 30 years old, he said.

Investigators from the Vista Fire Department are probing the cause of the blaze, Oceanside Battalion Chief Scott Stein said.

“We are closing the station temporarily until we can get it assessed,” Ward said. “We moved the units to different stations to accommodate the calls.”

Staff writer Alex Riggins contributed to this report.

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