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At least four businesses in downtown Hayward are likely destroyed after a two-alarm fire broke out early Monday.
"The whole building’s dust," said Rose.
Crews responded quickly, but had to call a second alarm almost immediately after arriving on the scene.
The cause of the fire is still being investigated, but there are reports that a person was on the roof just before the fire broke out.
Chalk It Up Owner Keith Burks said homeless people have been living on the roof for months now. "We’ve had homeless people turn off our air conditioning, we’ve chased them off roof before. We stopped because we didn’t want them to retaliate."
"Anytime there’s an abandoned building, you know, that’s a place where homeless will frequent," said Nicholson, a problem that has been exacerbated with so many businesses closed in the pandemic. "So we’ll definitely look into that."
Burks told KCBS Radio that before the fire, he was beginning to think about reopening possibly around the end of the year.
"Been cleaning up, getting it ready. Now it’s gone."