CALEXICO — A spot where three pieces of property converge was the site of a combination brush and structure fire that Calexico crews were able to contain and extinguish without calling in outside agencies.
For a short period of time on Wednesday night, May 26, a pair of storage facilities in the back of some residential properties in the central portion of the city went up in what appeared to be some fairly intense flame from the looks of video taken by a bystander.
Around 10:16 p.m. fire crews were called to a home in the 400 block of Halcon Court, a cul-de-sac, where a shed was on fire. That shed was separated by a fence from a larger storage-type structure that had also caught fire on the rear property of the multi-unit Calexico Gardens Apartments at 1620 Rockwood Ave., said Calexico Firefighter Joshua Paddock.
On top of that, there was an attached brush fire on the northwest corner of a vacant lot to the immediate south of those properties. The lot is bordered to the east by C.N. Perry Avenue.
Paddock said it was basically all hands-on deck, as all on-duty personnel — nine or 10 individuals, he said — worked to put out the converged fires.
“It was around a lot of other structures, but we knocked it out pretty quick,” he said.
The fire is still under investigation, but it is suspicious in nature considering that the vacant lot where the brush fire is located has been the site of a few transient-set fires before. Paddock said fire crews responded to a small brush fire there last week, in an area where the lot intersects with Kincaid Street.
The point of origin is unclear, however, Paddock added. He said it was not known whether the fire started in the brush and spread to the storage units or the opposite. Everything was on fire when crews arrived.
A few hours later, Calexico firefighters responded to what was likely another manmade fire, this time around 12:30 a.m. Thursday at the railroad tracks at Cesar Chavez Boulevard and Highway 98, about 50 feet back from the roadway.
In that case, Paddock said it took three fire personnel about 10 minutes to put out the flames.
