OAKLAND (KCBS RADIO) – Oakland officials said a four-alarm fire that broke out Friday morning at a high rise senior living facility near Lake Merritt could have been a disaster.
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The blaze at the Grand Lake Gardens apartment building erupted just before 6 a.m.
Oakland fire crews arrived on scene and immediately started rescuing dozens of senior residents from their balconies.
"None were hanging off of the balcony, but several were immobile to where we had to carry them down," Oakland Fire Chief Reginald Freeman said.
Three people – including a firefighter – were taken to hospitals with non life threatening injuries. The fire was contained by 7:24 a.m.
Approximately 85 residents were transported to a nearby senior living facility.
The cause of the blaze was electrical, according to the woman who lives in the apartment where flames started.
"She noticed a power strip that was sparking, it caught a blanket that was on fire on the adjacent couch and the couch quickly was engulfed in fire," Freemand said.
When the resident fled, she left her door open, and Freeman said if the door had been closed the fire would not have spread to the same degree.
"Upon arrival, that apartment was fully engulfed in fire and the fire spread out into the hallway," he said.
The other issue under investigation is that the internal water pipes in the building that fire crews tapped into were not working, so crews instead were forced to haul in thousands of feet of hose into the high rise.
The building was last inspected on Oct. 7, and Freeman said everything was working then.
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