48-unit S.F. apartment building gutted by fire

[AsahinaKimi]

Source: SFGATE.com



A fire raged through an apartment building South of Market in San Francisco on Wednesday, forcing the evacuation of dozens of people as more than 100 firefighters beat back the flames.

The fire was reported at 5:24 p.m. in a 48-unit apartment building on the 1000 block of Folsom Street, between Sixth and Seventh streets, and by the time everyone had evacuated, flames were leaping from floor to floor and heavy black smoke was billowing.

"I heard the fire engines, and my girlfriend opened the door and smelled smoke," said Tanith Nichols, 33, who rushed out of the building, leaving all his belongings. "I do computer repair work and had 10 computers in there, all my clothes, tools, some money. This is a disaster."

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/05/04/BAV41JC8EH.DTL

[rfranklin]

1. Maybe the Trade Towers should have been made of wood....

adn they wouldn't have fallen down.

[Systematic Chaos]

2. It amazes me how this old apartment building didn't just collapse into its own footprint.

:shrug:

[One_Life_To_Give]

3. Never retrofitted with 100% Sprinklers?

I would of thought SF would of been in the handfull of cities that required it on multi-family residences.

[CountAllVotes]

4. Sprinklers?

Are you kidding me? In this part of town, where lots of old buildings exist (as is the case throughout most of San Francisco), many if not almost all of them aren't even up to the building code requirements much less do the landlords care to install sprinklers in them.

The landlords in SF tend to care about one thing and one thing only and that is collecting all this money every month for living in a damn dump. I bet they were getting close to $1500-$2000 a month for these apartments. :grr:

Shame on them!

:kick:

[Devil_Fish]

6. Your $1500-$2000 a month estimant is low even for a 1 bedroom. NT

[Blue_Tires]

5. I'm just happy there was no loss of life

all the crap in the apartments can be replaced...B-)

[Nossida]

7. That Building

That building was notorious back in the day.
As were most of the SOMA apartment buildings.
SF has gentrified to the point of no return.
But, there is only 1 San Francisco, and there
is no place like it.

One of the most wonderful Cities on Earth.