Correction: The San Francisco Chronicle is now reporting that it was a five-alarm fire, which required more than 150 firefighters:
First 5-alarm fire in SF in several years, chief tells @jvanderbeken
— Vivian Ho (@VivianHo) March 12, 2014
#BREAKING Continuing live coverage of 6-alarm fire burning near AT&T Park. Watch: http://t.co/LQjFeBWHes Smoke now visible atop nearby bldg.
— NBC Bay Area (@nbcbayarea) March 12, 2014
Neighbors evacuated from homes, no word when they can safely return. http://t.co/JxlEUd22Z8 pic.twitter.com/fbVRHq88hH
— KCBS 740 AM/106.9 FM (@KCBSNews) March 12, 2014
5th ALARM: rare 5th alarm called bringing crews in from entire city. Crews retreat to safety as collapse begins. No injuries reported.
— Emergency_In_SF (@Emergency_In_SF) March 12, 2014
Mission Bay fire from Valencia @MLNow pic.twitter.com/Ulf0lqg3Zv
— Nikki Larue (@nikkaylarue) March 12, 2014
Likely cause of fire: greed.
In a quest to maximize profits, developers and their contractors rush the construction process and cut corners.
Fire detection and suppression could easily be designed into the construction process (e.g. smoke alarms, security guards w/ some fire training, plenty of extinguishers on wheels) but that would cost a little money.
Hiring dumb welders to work amongst lots of flammable exposed wood, then having no fire detection/suppression strategy didn’t end up saving money this time!
I’ll bet whatever insurance company is on the hook for this $100 million or so is going to demand better fire safety strategies during construction from now on.
Probably arson by those damn anti gentrification protesters.
I doubt it, since the fire started during the working day. That would require a huge amount of courage and sophistication from a group whose tactics are typically limited to breaking a window at night or trying to stop people getting to work on a bus but then running away when the police arrive.
Buildings are quite vulnerable to fire during the construction phase and I’d guess this was caused by a mistake on the site. A similar thing happened at a construction site by West Oakland BART a few months ago.
Then again, I blame Google shuttles and the Twitter tax break for everything. Doesn’t everyone?