Lake Forest Firefighters Didn't Have Far to Go

Last night around the time my son was due back from his college class we heard a lot of sirens.  That always makes my wife nervous, so I flipped on the Orange County Fire Authority radio channel and found out a commercial structure fire was underway not too far from here, and it not only took out an auto shop but was threatening to burn down Fire Station 19 as well:

Firefighters attacking a fire at an auto repair shop had to fall back Thursday night after the blaze threatened their own firehouse, authorities said.

The fire was reported at 9:34 p.m. at the 23100 block of Orange Avenue, said Capt. Greg McKeown of the Orange County Fire Authority. Firefighters who responded to the blaze had only a short distance to travel, since the fire was near the OCFA fire station on El Toro Road.

About 45 firefighters responded to a fire at an auto repair shop in Lake Forest, which threatened to damage a nearby fire station as well.

When firefighters arrived, they saw the garage building engulfed in heavy flames, he said.

"They had fire coming out of both sides of the building," he said.

Firefighters requested help to fight the blaze, and about 45 firefighters responded.

Officials also sent firefighters back to the El Toro Road fire station because fire from the garage was beginning to threaten the fire station, he said.

The fire was knocked down by 10:10 p.m., McKeown said. The fire station was not damaged.

The sirens we were hearing were coming from the 2nd alarm units that were heading in. From the radio traffic I heard things were a little dicey for awhile, but there's nobody better at knocking that stuff down than the OCFA.

I drove by the location this morning and fire crews were still on hand doing the overhaul and investigation, more than 12 hours after the fire.  There were a couple of vehicles that had been pulled out of the service bays.  I feel sorry for the guy who dropped his car off there yesterday.

This brought back a few memories.  Way back on March 10, 1988 I was sitting in my Mission Viejo office when someone came running in and said there was a big fire on the other side of the freeway.  I had recently bought a video camera (when we found out my wife was pregnant with our first child) and normally that camera would have been at home, but that day I was planning to go straight from work to a concert appearance at Knott's Berry Farm that night and I was bringing the camera along to video our performance.

I headed out to my car, grabbed the camera, and found a spot on the hillside overlooking the I-5 where I had a clear view of the fire and shot some pretty good video.  This was also an auto shop and burned pretty vigorously for quite awhile. I took about 10 minutes of the tape and put it on YouTube and here it is: