Transcripts For KPIX KPIX 5 News At 6pm 20140312

Apartment complex, is that accurate . How big is it . Reporter it looks like a half block long. I cant tell whether its more than one project per se. It may be more than one building but my understanding one project is on fire. I need to get closer and talk to officials. What you see from ground level right now is a lot of water being thrown on this thing. Ladder trucks, i mean, more than 100 firefighters down here and they are in emergency mode. This entire block south of channel street you see i see four or five rows of Apartment Buildings. There are people out here from their new apartments looking up at this going i cant believe it. Joe, its right across the street from the estrada Mission Bay Apartments and acouple of blocks from the Cancer Center and mission bay complex although it has nothing to do with ucsf. Its very close in that neighborhood. Have you seen construction workers around . Reporter i have seen some gathered around, not ones from this project but from ones nearby, as well. The ones nearby are nervously anticipating what could happen and, you know, i think waiting further orders about what they should be doing. A lot of them are taking pictures. We have some information from the newsroom. He i just got this. We are told this is this project is 360 units. This is an Apartment Development and they call it mission bay. China bay, kind of synonymous right now. Its San Franciscobased bre properties incorporated. Thats who is developing this particular piece of real estate. The site is 3. 7 acres. Its two parcels and represents the companys only property in the Mission Bay Neighborhood of San Francisco. We have been talking about how ucsf has been building extensively in that part of mission bay and south beach and how, you know, the housing is kind of lagged behind a little bit and how housing now is really on the fast track in San Francisco. I went to a Chamber Breakfast a couple of weeks back and that is their main priority to get more units built get some Affordable Housing built but mainly people working in San Francisco need a place to live and they are building these things 360 units affected here so thats going to put a big dent in the available housing in San Francisco for all the tech workers, all the people that are in the ucsf community and where are they going to go . You were also talking a little bit earlier with a retired fire captain, and he was speaking specifically he said something at the end which may or may not have gotten past some people. He talked about dynamite and referred to 1906. The San Francisco Fire Department in construction with the u. S. Army actually blew up buildings in the ensuing fires from the 1906 earthquake to try to stop the spread of fire. They blew buildings up to do exactly what this building is sort of doing on its own to collapse the buildings down so there wasnt that air and fuel mixture that was so potent to keeping the fires going. So he was referring to 1906. I know a lot of people knew that. But the dynamite comment he made was not a joke. They used that and used it somewhat successfully in 1906. Were not anywhere near that right now. No. But this is a fire that is destroying a 360unit apartment complex. Its gone to five alarms. And we saw a little bit ago in fact you can kind of see it on the larger picture there, where the flames are burning, just to the upper lefthand side they are getting water on the adjacent buildings. There is a better shot of that in fact. Its part of the protection aspect of the firefight. Not the suppression. They cant really get this thing under control. They just have to contain it and keep those other buildings safe and as we have seen, some of those are still under construction. Others recently finished. Yeah. San Francisco Fire Department said thats their goal just to keep it within this they know the building will be a complete loss but if they can keep it contained, thats what they are trying to do to protect the other buildings. We learned a few minutes ago that at least the top two floors are completely gone but from this picture it looks like its really spread to some of the lower floors, as well. This thing started really going, it was called in just before 5 00. Im told it was 4 56, fourth and china basin, and for those of you just joining us, a five alarm fire this is 360unit Apartment Building in the china basin neighborhood right near the ucsf complexes. Not associated with ucsf but as ken said bre properties is the developer and that shot from the ground from joseph cousins, you can see the crowd that has really started to gather in that neighborhood just after 6 00, so a lot of people who have just moved into this neighborhood starting to come home and see this. Yeah. A lot of new apartments in the area, this area very close to at t park. We have mentioned many times that this is an exploding neighborhood in many ways, of new businesses and apartment complexes trying to keep up with the demand for more housing here in the city and this is just one of many buildings in the area under construction. One of the things that the Fire Department kept saying was that its burning pure fuel right now. And we have mentioned how hot this fire is. And the challenge of trying to contain something that doesnt really have anything but the stuff that fuels the flames. And the fire that chopper 5 camera is zooming in on now burning the most intensely in the 360 unit building, but when we saw the wider shot it looked like maybe the other part of the building might be salvageable in that they are going to be able to keep the fire from spreading to that part of the building. That will be up to engineers and inspectors. Maybe they can partition the building off and rebuild it or something but i think their main concern is to not let it get any bigger. It looks like they are getting a hold on what looks to me its hard to see maybe the south, Southwest Corner of the building. Mmhm. It looks like the main fire is up on the Northeast Corner and, you know, if they can do that, great. That would cut down on the amount of fuel thats being consumed but also, you know, the danger to adjacent buildings. The lone shot of that firefighter up on that aerial truck is just amazing. I think his job right now is to protect other buildings. It looks like he is down in that alley at the top of the right screen there and he is shooting down that alley he has a building to his back. Incredible. It looks like he is so close to those flames. Thats an incredibly hot and aggressive place. He is the guy putting that curtain up that you see on the building on the left. He just its just a fog, get as much water as you can in there to keep that cool. And not let anything cross over into other construction because as you can see theres scaffolding on that building too. Joe vazquez mentioned theres hundreds at least 100 firefighters on the ground right now surrounding this entire building. He said he believes it takes up about half block radius and this is near 4th and channel street over in the china basin area. Wow. That reportedly that firefighter about 7 stories up on that extendible ladder from the truck there on the ground. Theres joe. Joe, can you hear me . Reporter yes. Any update . That firefighter behind you is about 7 stories high . Reporter yeah. About 7 stories high and you can see those flames are just pushing down on him right now. Its almost like he is taking cover. I also want to point out to you, joseph, if you pan to the left, you will see that Apartment Building just across the street its beige in color you can see there are people actually gathered out on the balcony watching this go down. They are actually shooting water from the tops of their buildings and i just spoke to a woman who lives down in that building and she was trying to talk to chp about getting back in. No. Its going to be hours she was told. So, you know, she like some of these other folks are waiting to find out and hoping that the flames dont spread to their structures but yes, so in the 45 minutes or so that i have been here, i have been watching these flames just continue to it seems to me they are not diminishing that much, you know, they are getting some water on it. They are really concentrating on making sure it doesnt spread. But it seems to me its really difficult for them to, you know, to get a fire of this magnitude under control. How is the smoke, a problem for people on the ground or the apartments . Reporter not where i am standing. North of the fire, it doesnt seem to be blowing that hard. Its like its moving at a westerly direction. But its not staying at ground level at this point. So no, from where im at, you know, we have had our share of smoke choked live shots from fires but this is not one of them. Now, im looking at what appears to be an ambulance moving out of the scene. I didnt see anybody get loaded in at this point. We are still waiting for the Public Information officer to come down here and give us an update. We are really hoping to get some more details. At this point we are looking at an Apartment Building under construction that burst into flames and is out of control. Joe, where you are standing in your live shot right now, there looks to be dozens of people looking at the fire. Are they evacuated or just in the area checking it out . Reporter no. I have been talking to folks in the crowd and maybe i have only run into like 10 or so people who were out of their places. They are on their bicycles or walking back through this area from work and are just taking pictures, shooting video. I guess what were doing, same kind of thing except, you know, theyre not reporting about it but yeah, it is not the case that most of these people are out of their homes. At this point, as you look down, most of these properties are still under construction. Its my understanding that beige building that we point out earlier is one of the few this direction that actually has any inhabitants. You mentioned that and one of those buildings that the firefighters are on the balcony shooting water into the building thats on fire right there. Its unbelievable. Smaller picture there, off to the left, that water is coming from the rooftop. We can see it in both pictures now coming from the rooftop of the building across the street in the effort it to keep it from spreading. Our information in the newsroom is that this is a company bre properties, incorporated. They are San Franciscobased. This is a 360unit Apartment Development in the mission bay area. It says here that the these numbers are preliminary but it says that the total Development Costs of this particular project is about 227 million dollar. Wow. This is a big loss for this company. The units were looking like they were going to go 630,000 each. Thats per unit. We dont know how big they were but they were being constructed. Dont know the completion date. One more time, how much each . It says 630,000 a unit. Wow. So you multiply that by the 360 and theres your math. And they were due to be completed though shortly. I mean, it wasnt that far away from being done. And, of course, the fire sparking this afternoon of course put things back to square one most likely. This thing will probably smolder i mean, if there is mother additional collapsing of the building for days maybe weeks. The Fire Department says with no Fire Suppression active in the building yet, they didnt have sprinklers functioning yet. Scaffolding on the outside, insulation, probably some plumbing going on inside whether that was electrical or water, it remains to be seen. But it was not outfitted with a fire Sprinkler System yet. Just too new construction to get a chance and thats real similar to what happened in santana row down in san jose. And similar buildings in the area are in the same sort of condition. No Fire Suppression installed yet. And just pure fuel that burned that would burn just like this. Yeah. Were also seeing more of that building start to fall away now and just sort of burn into it itself, which is again, you know, exactly why you dont put fire personnel into a structure like this. If you are just joining us, we should mention that we dont have any reports of any injuries which is absolutely great news. And San Francisco Fire Department has well over 100 firefighters now responding to this. Its five alarms. So you can probably count on one hand the amount that theres been the times there have been a fire alarm fire in the city of a fivealarm fire in the city of San Francisco outside of the 06 earthquake and this is in a section of the city thats brandnew. So its a shame to see it yeah. We are just hearing now, ken, that the part of the roof at ucsf is now on fire and now crews trying to keep this fire contained but it seems like another building has now caught fire. Yeah. So that would be an adjacent building and, you know, we have to look at the way the smoke is blowing and the way the flames are sending embers up to see, you know, where that might be. Its probably along that street and i dont know if thats 4th looks like it would be fourth. Fourth and channel where the area is right there in china basin. I believe its 12004th street and 701 china basin so right there on that corner. Ucsf has been building there for the last decade and has buildings all around there. That would be a flashover. Embers that have gotten into the roof structure now of this other building and this is trouble, guys. This is not good. We have been fortunate the wind hasnt kicked up and brought us this problem before. Brian hackney, the winds as you said earlier are not supposed to kick up for a couple of hours but obviously, embers have spread. Its not going to take much. There are wind advisories in the area. The winds in San Francisco about 8 miles an hour but whatever gets lifted from these blames is going to land on adjacent buildings and thats bad news. This part of town all along king street about a block from this, all of china basin is lined with condo complex after condo complex after condo complex on one side of the street right along the waterfront. And its extremely bad news. In terms of collapse of these two of those orange flames that you see as kenny point out earlier the temperature of the flames is about 2,000 degrees. Steel melts at 2500. But it doesnt have to melt for the building to collapse. All it has to do is get soft and that happens at about 1,000 degrees so this fire is twice as hot as it needs to be to cause a Building Collapse. And you can see that smoke really starting to travel now. Brian you talked about this earlier. Go back to it. Is that this can create its own weather system even though there may be not wind or rain or anything else in the atmosphere. But in that, its something completely different. In the immediate vicinity, yes. And what they are doing, they are throwing all of their resources into containing this fire because the last thing they want to see is what we just saw a few minutes ago, which is ignition in nearby buildings. Boy, theyd have a mess on their hands. Adjacent to this is the ucsf mission bay complex and the ucsf Cancer Center, as well. I believe that is one of their buildings. It has smoke coming from the roof if it is indeed embers. Its a little disheartening because we dont see any Emergency Response on that building. I dont see anyone there and theres quite a bit of smoke showing. It looks like its up on an area on the rooftop. I dont know if thats vegetation thats burning up there. It almost looks like it might be a lawn or something but its definitely in the roof structure and theres smoke showing now in that building. Thats bad news. The good news about that building is being completed there is a Sprinkler System in place that would be functional. There are emergency vehicles in the street below so sf fire is hip to that. They have got their guys there. But look at the distance. Thats 1,000 feet, you know . In no time it started another roof fire in another building. I want to get straight to a contractor named jim. He is at the scene right now. Jim, what can you tell us and what can you tell us about this building and why its burning so intensely . Im not at the scene. Im watching your broadcast. But i was in the building at 3 15 this afternoon. Whats on fire is Mission Bay Block five. Its 172 units. Its half of this project thats mission bay 360. The other building is block 11 to the southwest. So the building is 172 units. The bottom two floors are concrete. All the uppers are wood framed. And you say you were in the building at 3 15 this afternoon. Now, what was your project . What were you working on . Whats it the entire building . We supply the doors for the entire building. Wow. Its called the what . The mission 360 . Mission bay 360 is the whole job name but the building on fire is block 5. Its half of those 172 units. Reporter 172 units. So the point how far along in the construction process would you say they are here, jim . The bottom second and third floors were sheet rocked in the hightower building the point on fire. The Main Building on long bridge and 4th. The second and third floors were sheet rocked ready to tape. But no windows were in stalls . Windows were in most of the building on the upper floors. Jim, now we saw this fire really just take off within a matter of minutes. Can you tell us what you might think that might have caught fire, the possible risks here . No clue. Its just an open building under construction. All right. You had to be pretty surprised after getting home after leaving this project intact and getting home and seeing this thing going up in flames and smoke. Yes. Shock and you know, an hour and a half from the freeway to get from the job site to my home in the east bay and half an hour later i got a call from the general contractor making sure all our people are accounted for. And they were . Yes. We dont have any confirmation of this, guys, but we are seeing people out in the street now and that is an indication that maybe they are starting to evacuate. Some of these buildings surrounding this fire because of the flashover on the other building which looks like part of the medical complex at ucsf. There are people down there on that corner now. There are fire trucks in the area and i wouldnt be surprised if some of these occupied buildings they start to tell people to take off. Mission bay block 3 is the building directly across the street on 4th street. And then Mission Bay Block 2 is the building on channel all the way from third to fourth. And by just looking at your screen there, jim, were told at least the first two floors or the top two floors are completely gone. But by looking at that screen, it has to be more. The corner on long bridge and fourth was six stories tall. Wow. The buildings that you described adjacent, how far along in construction, were they finished on still under construction . Block 2 is just about finished. And partially occupied. Block 3 is directly across 4th street is completely occupied. Wow. So thats why this effort to keep those buildings protected is so important tonight. Yes. All right. Jim, thank you for your insight. You were there at 3 15 and now youre watching your construction project you have been on this project for a while . Six months. Six months. Wow. Yeah. It does look more and more like they are going to have to just let this thing burn out. Its actually reminiscent of the Apartment Building that was under construction opposite the west oakland bart station that burned down last yearer a few years ago now. Just had to let it burn. All right, jim, thank you so much. I know youll keep watching and we appreciate your input. All right. Thank you. All right. Take care. Thank you for your coverage. You bet. If you are just joining us, this is at 4th and china basin. Firefighters battling a what is now a fivealarm fire at an apartment complex. Right now their main goal is to keep this fire from spreadin to adjacent buildings. It looks like the roof of Ucsf Medical Center may have caught fire. There are hundreds of firefighters on the ground right now you see attacking this from below. You saw earlier a firefighter up on a ladder tackling that spot fire right there. It appears there you can see some smoke coming from a building nearby. This could be the ucsf campus. Its part of ucsf but we see fire trucks getting in place. So hopefully they can get to that right away and that building of course being occupied would have a functional fire Sprinkler System. So the hope is that they can get that small keep it small and get it out. Chopper 5 just doing a great job. They are zooming in on these buildings for us and giving us the perfect Vantage Point for our viewers and one of our viewers, jim, called and really set the record straight for us. 360 total units, but the section thats on fire now was 172unit wing that six stories tall. And that is fully consumed right now. You can see crews now responding to the Cancer Center to check out that smoke up on the roof. And chopper 5, that shot of a little smoldering on the roof there, that building is not good news. No. I didnt see the crew on the ground with much sense of urgency and not a lot of smoke coming from there so that might be good news if they got that thing taken care of it. Maybe its landscaping or lawn or something up there with embers not getting into the roof structure. That would be great. Jim also mentioned there was some new construction that went up that surrounds this building and two of those units that he talked about were actually occupied just recently. Yes. Two of those buildings had People Living in them or partially occupied. 172 units, he said, in this particular building and he is a contractor and was there at 3 15, left the job site at 3 15, got home, turned on the tv, saw channel 5, called us because he knew that this is one particular building, half of the mission bay 360 project, and the second and third floors he said were fully sheet rocked and the floors below that pretty much had been finished. He was there to install doors. He said the windows were actually into this building. And we saw how the smoke and the fire spread despite that. Its incredible. Right. It looks like that wall that we were looking at is finally come down, too. Partially anyway. And you can see where the fire is kind of just concentrated in the one corner and thats where San Francisco fire is doing its best to keep that sort of contained to that one area and they continue to throw water in the rest of the structures. Theres a lot of hot wood in there. Theres a lot of hot embers in there. And they dont want it to spark up in another part of the building especially with the little breeze thats beginning to kind of kick up a little bit. You can see smoke blowing more than just coming straight up now. Its a little bit of a breeze cooking now. And our retired fire Captain Point out too that part of the toxicity of this thing theres a lot of plastic and petrol product in there. One of the things would be the piping, the plastic piping. And thats all going up and thats causing the smoke to be fairly hazardous. Fortunately we havent heard of people having respiratory problems. Theres no Fire Suppression units built into this construction. So it just went up and it spread extremely quickly. Jim the contractor who called in earlier mentioned that this building is six stories. And we know that at least the first two on the very top are completely gone. It looks like from that picture that it could be possibly more. Definitely more. And the roof of this roof sounded like my father in the midwest. The roof of this thing is really starting to collapse as well as some of the exterior walls. It looks like the Fire Department has been successful in keeping this thing interior. Its falling in upon itself when it does collapse. Well, it might be getting helped by a little bit of the scaffolding that is still up on the outside a little bit of the structure Holding Things up. As we pull back in chopper 5, a noticeable diminishing of smoke now. Its concentrated in the west side there and they are training a lot of their hoses on the other side of the building to keep it from running through the building. But you can see that they are getting they have turned a corner on this. No pun intended. Absolutely. Its definitely beginning to wind down a little bit and none too soon. Because we had smoke showing on an adjacent building, the Cancer Center at ucsf. We dont know the status of that problem but you can see now that once that exterior wall caved in its running out of material. That was the focus all along is they would let it burn out. You definitely now the you can see it went from having been very dark black smoke to being more white and gray smoke which is good news. Looks like a huge bonfire, doesnt it, ken . A lot of wood and materials being used because it was unconstruction, some of that scaffolding, of course, has wooden platforms for each level. We saw that outside our building here when we were doing some remodeling. So you can kind of see well look at the view from the other shot that somehow looks like twin peaks looking out somebody fired off a picture for us. We appreciate that from the viewers give us a shot of what it looks like. But you can see a clear day out, you can see smoke for probably 25 miles. We are told we can see it from san jose, north bay, and oakland of course. Joe vazquez was hoping to get the Public Information officer from San Francisco fire. He is going to try to get back to us to give us any updates but at this point, if you are just joining us this fivealarm fire started just before 5 00. Its been burning for 90 minutes in the china basin area at 4th street near china basin and it is called the mission bay 360 project. These apartments were condos. Whats burning is a building that would have been half of that project, 172 units. It was going to be completed according to one contractor relatively soon. Well, know the anymore. Many of the Apartment Buildings around there and other buildings around there just recently finished, the goal of course of firefighters to keep this contained to this one building and away from the other ones. We appreciate the viewers checking in with us telling us especially the construction worker that was there who explained the bottom two floors are concrete and its hard for me to see what, you know, whats burning and whats not. But the bottom two floors were concrete and then the upper floors were already rocked and ready to be taped and textured and so they were within probably a few weeks of being completed at least part of this building. Still i dont know if San Francisco fire theyre good, but i dont know if they will ever find the cause of this. Theres so much destruction there to go through this building and try to figure out what caused it, may be impossible. Youre talking our do it yourself homeownerspeak when you say rocked. The sheetrock walls were up and ready to be taped with the mud and actually so it was starting to take form. It was starting to really take shape inside. Yeah. They at least some of the upper floors completed with sheetrock and were getting ready to be taped. And you can see now that a lot of this interior flame is starting to burn out just a bit which is great news. I dont see the Fire Department really training their fire water stream into the fire just yet. They are still suppressing from the outside and maybe their goal is to see if they can get more of this to fall in toward itself and eventually burn out. But yeah, whatever hopes we had, what, an hour and a half ago, two hours ago, well, yeah, two hours ago, of saving this structure, you know, went up that changed rather rapidly. Once this thing got going, it got going and i i think you really have to credit the firefighters in San Francisco for keeping it on that one corner and not letting it spread. We had smoke on adjacent buildings. Look at how massive this fire is. Looks like the golden gate approach coming westbound and looking down to the south you can see the smoke blowing. Can imagine how much water they put on this. Chopper 5 is showing us the most intensely an hour and a half of all that water, what a firefight. They have done an amazing job. It would be interesting with the proximity of the bay whether they ran hoses down to the bay. That would be interesting to find out. They have done that before, 89 loma prieta when the marina was on fire they ran a couple of lines out to the fire boat, phoenix that sat in the water and pumped water back. They are only a block or two away right near mccovey cove from the bay so theres your water source. It would be interesting to see the tactical fight that went on but great job by the San Francisco Fire Department. You hate to see loss in the structure but again, just to reiterate, nobody hurt that we know of. We have no reports of any serious injuries. And certainly nobody that we know of in the building. We havent been told, we havent been able to confirm that but we havent heard anything in terms of anyone inside and the building was unoccupied. It was under construction. So if you have to do this, probably the easiest and best way. Yeah. We spoke to jim a contractor working on that project. He mentioned that he left the project and it was fine, came home and realized his project was on fire but that all the construction workers that were working on that, they were gone by about 3 15. So as far as we know, there was nobody inside the building when this thing ignited. Mindy tallmadge thought the same thing, with the San Francisco Fire Department, at the time they got the call about 4 minutes to 5 00 when the first report came in. So this is such a huge complex. This is our joe vazquez. Joe, can you hear me . Reporter back with you. Had a chance to go down a little closer to the flames. Let me ask joseph to push right down there. Youre looking at 4th street south of market. In fact, south of the ballpark and intersection here is channel street. And right now you can see the flames have subsided significantly. But i have to tell you from up close, this may be a little hard to see from up above but from up close ground level, this metal is bent. It is twisted. It is fragile looking and i watched a portion of the Building Collapse in front of my very eyes as i was standing there. The firefighters are pretty much putting themselves out of harms way. They are concentrating on the surrounding buildings. I just talked to one off duty firefighter who was out there in a white Shirt Sleeves rolled up helping pull hoses for his colleagues who told me that they are pretty much focusing on surrounding buildings. They are going to let it burn out. That is Standard Operating Procedure when you come this far along on fighting a fire like this. Yeah. So there are over 100 firefighters and thats not counting the offduty ones who have just shown up to help. Right. Reporter i was amazed to see that. But thats what happens when these guys are off duty. They know they are first responders. Its in their blood. They will pitch in. I also want to tell you something else. You know, we were talking about whether they would actually use the body of water nearby and dip their hoses in. We have checked that out. It does not appear they are using any of the water from the nearby mission bay as they are streaming along. They are just going off the hydrants. They are pouring a significant amount of water. We keep going back to the dramatic picture of the firefighter on the ladder putting water on the biggest place where the flames are. Were you able to get close to him to see what exactly he was doing . Yeah. He is literally directing the stream of this high powered hose on the flames of an adjacent building to the fire from what i could gather and, you know, it takes a human being like as much as we have so many things automated in our world, theres firefighters at the top of this ladder, seems very secure, doesnt lookalikes waving at all. The wind isnt that strong doesnt look like hes waving at all. The wind isnt that strong up there or at ground level from what i can tell. He is just directing the stream to make sure the next building over doesnt catch fire. Let me tell you what i learned about the next building over. So the fire is not actually at the intersection of fourth and channel. Its the next building down. So the one building that they are trying to keep from catching fire thats also under construction is called mercy housing. And according to a Business Owner who works very close to here, this is going to be one of the Family Housing units, a perhaps lowincome housing unit, that is going up here in the area. As you know, whenever theres any housing in the city of San Francisco, there are negotiations made to make sure that there will be Family Housing, that there will be housing for people who can afford it. That is what this particular building is going to be as long as they can keep the flames from touching it. Wow. All right, joe. Thank you. I want to go quickly to these viewer pictures that were taken from folks in the area. Do we have that first picture there . Wow. This picture from marin couy on the approach to the gold gate bridge. Viewer warren donnovan takes this photo from his balconyn San Francisco. From twitter another view the smoke from marin countyy john branch. Mike saldi on twitter says could feel the heat as he w taking pictures. The smoke could be seen from as far away as san jose. Later, another Bay Area Community is putting the br flames engulf that one part of the building. This building itself is 172 units. Its part of a bigger building that has 360 condos. This was pricy Apartment Buildings, pricy condos. This was called the mission bay 360 project. Just part of one of the buildings that were going up in the china basin area. Joining joe vazquez down there is our reporter christin ayers. Christin, you have there for a while. What have you learned . Reporter i have had a chance to talk to some of the people standingout here just watching these flames. Many people who were standing here on the corner just sort of stopped saw the pictures on twitter saw tv video and stopped to look down the street and stare at that wall of flames that is coming at you. We did talk to a few people. Some people had been evacuated from Apartment Buildings in the area. Others just taking precautions and choosing to just back away from their apartments, stay away from their buildings even though they have not officially been evacuated. Take a listen to what some witnesses to this fire told us a little earlier. Just a really serious fire going on, spread from a smaller fire and jumped to a different building. I saw it kind of expanding on the roof over here. But i was shopping over at rainbow and i saw the smoke. I took pictures all the way. Its crazy. Reporter and thats precisely what we have been hearing from witnesses. Unbelievable just the visual of those flames on that building and spreading to other buildings. You heard from joe that there was part of another building that had collapsed. Some of these people standing around staring at it just watching it unfold. Some people unable to return home because of the danger of the flames. Spreading. A dramatic picture of the fire what it looked like before. About 5 00 when it started to break out. The smoke and flames concentrated on the side of the building and scaffolding there. Then it looks like its smoldering. The smoke is what is a promising sign and that it went from being that thick, black smoke clearly burning highly toxic fuel to what it is now where firefighters are getting a handle and concentrating this. We have talk about people who moved in and lived close by and we have one of those neighbors on the phone. Michelle, did you see this from the start to where it is now . Just about. It happened really fast. I think the Fire Department was on the scene within a minute. And they hit it from every possible angle. As fast as they could i think within 10 minutes they had a good sense it was going to go down. They started evacuating immediately. They evacuated you . Yes, they did. The smoke was all consuming. It seems like it was under control. And then within seconds it just, you know, a big cloud of black smoke came over and went down the street. I live across the street from this building. How would you describe how fast it went . Extremely fast theres a growing concern among the community and neighbors because most of that i believe it was under construction and most of it was made of wood and we were all talking about we are told a lot of these buildings are relatively new. How soon have you moved in . How long have you lived there . I have been here about a year and a half. How many people were in your building that were evacuated . I would say probably close to 100. Wow. They are not giving you any idea when you can go back, even though it looks like the fire is actually not under control but its the flames are certainly not intense like they were. Yeah. No word yet. They still have the neighborhoods blocked off. Well, im sorry this was a growing concern and is a sort of the Worst Nightmare for neighbors, i guess. Yeah. But im just thankful nobody got hurt. Absolutely. We are, too. Michelle, thank you. And i hope you have a safe rest of the evening and get back home soon. Were going to go to doug sovern right now. He is by ucsf where we initially saw smoldering going on over there possibly another fire. Doug what can you tell us . Well, while we were alongside the original fire, there were a lot of burning embers blowing over our heads. Some of them landed on the building behind us. This is two blocks south of the original fire and some of those embers landed on the roof of the Smith Cardiovascular Research Building at 555 mission bay boulevard south. Thats two blocks south of the fire. And they did ignite a small fire on the roof of that building and firefighters and uc police and San Francisco police just came running down the street they triggered fire alarms, they got everybody out of that building. Most people were out already. But they got the rest out almost in a panic to get people to move back. They moved the perimeter back a block and a half to get all the lookyloos out of the way and firefighters got up on the roof and put it out very quickly. So they kept that from igniting into something much worse. This is a fully occupied completed ucsf Research Building. If that had gotten fully involved it would have been a whole nother story from what were seeing just two blocks away but they put that out. That threat is gone and as you can see, the fire itself is much smaller than it was. As far as i could tell, ill tell you, ken, there are burning embers or there were burning embers just little black smoldering bits for blocks around, five, six blocks in either direction in any direction from the fire. The sidewalks look like somebody came through with charcoal smudge sticks or something. There was piles of this stuff all over the place and they are lucky that that is the only place that anything actually landed and caught fire. Indeed. They got a jump on it. And you mentioned that they did evacuate that building. Are the people just around the building right now . Are they allowed to go back in, do you know . They are not letting anyone back in. You know, most people were out of that building because its the end of the workday and major fire going on two blocks away so most of them had left or come outside. There were a few stragglers. They got the rest of them out. They are not letting people go back in. There are some people saying should we go back to work, home . I said you might as well go home at this point. They also evacuated the cancer Research Building next to that. So most of these people are figuring at this point, you know, they might as well call it a day and go home but there are people who are working doing research at night that sort of thing and they are hoping they will still be able to get back in. Theres no fire here anymore. Still two blocks to the north and we are not seeing active flames anymore, just gray and white smoke. As for the fire, doug, itself, you have been reporting here long, long time. How would you describe it . How would you compare this building going up in flames to others that you have covered . Reporter well, i have season pretty horrible conflagrations over the decades. This was an intense inferno. Just a wall of flame a block wide facing the creek as big as anything ive seen. It reminded me that there was a china basin fire oh, i dont know maybe 20 years ago or more than that. It was similar to that a building on china basin itself before the ballpark was there. It reminded me of that. Of course this did not compare to Something Like the Oakland Hills firestorm where you had so many people lose their lives. As far as we know, nobody was hurt here, an unoccupied building under construction. But when it was really going around i have lost track when that was, 5 00, 5 30, it was just literally an inferno, just a massive block of wall of flame you could see i dont know how far away. It wa dramatic. It was seen from the south bay and across the bridge. It was massive. And its amazing these firefighters not only their quick work at ucsf the campus there and getting that under control but also just what they have accomplished on the building itself. I mean, compare it to what it looked like an hour ago. It was completely engulfed in this in not only flames but this thick, black smoke and now youre seeing the progress, the good side of that white smoke now. They did an incredible job. We are getting a little more information that doug sovern, kcbs, we appreciate your help down there on the street. If you are just joining us this a wood frame 172unit building caught fire just before 5 p. M. This is block number 5 they call it. The building is part of a group of buildings being constructed. It combines with 701 china basin makes up the 360unit apartment project dubbed mission bay 360. The project is being built by a contractor Suffolk Construction company. They are out of boston. And it is i believe owned by bre properties. That is the information we have right now. We were able to speak with Mindy Tallmadge of the San Francisco Fire Department. We are getting some numbers in terms of the fight that went on here for several hours. 125 firefighters involved, 35 different trucks and engines on the scene to contain the fire and they did a magnificent job of doing that outside of the one spillover on to the Cancer Research center a couple of blocks away. They saved all the adjacent buildings there. We are told that the fire started on the 6th floor of the project so it happened up near the roof which explains how it got traveling so fast into the roof structure and just really an amazing problem. The Fire Department kept these adjacent buildings. Even though one building as mindy said the windows blew out because of the heat, for all intents and purposes, its a i dont want to say minor but damage to the outer structure of the building. Its not lost. That building was saved and you know we have talked about Brian Hackney was alongside to talk about, you know, 2500 degrees temperature of this fire at one point melting the steel and we saw scaffolding collapse and steel beams collapse and literally floors pancaked down as it got hot. These are only a couple of feet away some of these adjacent buildings. The firefighters, this is our hero of the day. He has been up on the airial ladder all afternoon long and pounding the adjacent buildings and sort of the corner of that structure with water and heres a guy, you know, who said ill go up. [ laughter ] hes a hero. Incredible. Hes been there all afternoon. Its been incredible to watch. Ken, i want to go out to andria borba. We have been talking about how this fire is very reminiscent of the santana row fire down in san jose. Reporter im with retired captain vinnie of the san jose fire deal. You fought the santana row fire. What similarities from what you see on television are there with that to this one . Essentially any building that large under construction is like a big pile of kindling waiting to go up in flames. And with no builtin fire us is press because its suppression because its under construction, its only a matter of time. Are you surprised this hasnt jumped to as many buildings . They are putting water curtains up between the uninvolved and involved buildings to prevent that from happening. If they can possibly keep enough water on the uninvolved buildings to keep them cool enough, then they wont ignite. What kind of conditions are firefighters facing right now with this fire in mission bay from your experience . They are essentially just going to prevent any further fires if they can. They are not going to put that fire out. Its going out when the fuel runs out. Theres not enough water in all the pipes in San Francisco to put that fire out. How long did the santana row fire go . All day, all night and went on all week. It will go out when the fuel is again to. Is there anything to suggest this is anything but an electrical problem . A fire like this could have started for any number of regions. A trash fire could have caught a small part of the building on fire. It could have been welders torch laid down somewhere. It could have been rags that, you know, have have oils on them that are combustible and then they sit and smolder. So they will have a hard time figuring out how this one started. Same thing with santana row. I dont think they ever truly figured out what started that fire. That was my next question. How do fire investigators determine what caused this thing in the first place . Is there a way to do it when theres this much Square Footage . I think its going to be very difficult for investigators to pinpoint the cause of the fire. Unless its on an extreme edge of the fire, where they can find enough evidence as to what caused the fire, not that it was criminal or anything but just something that shows them, oh, this is what happened. But with that much heat being generated it destroys just about everything. We are hearing reports of glass windows breaking blocks away from the heat of the fire. Is that unusual or is this shoddy construction . I think the cause is the radiant heat that we talked about. Radiant heat, you know, can travel so much distance and that glass absorbs the heat just like the sun coming in a window. It gets hotter and the glass shatters and that creates a problem because they have an open space that fire could go into. We havent talk about all the embers and debris thats tossed into the air and lands all over the city after that. Reporter thank you very much. That is retired fire captain vinnie with the san jose Fire Department discussing how he thinks this fire is burning in relation to the very large fire in santana row a few years back. Andria borba, thank you. As far as the evening commute im being given this up date. Sf muni kt line which runs through china basin there is a delay on that line but muni apparently has set up a shuttle service, a Bus Shuttle Service instead. So the kt line is affected but there are shuttles running. Now that the smoke is sort of dwindled a little bit, you can see where the firefighters are on the ground and the water that they are putting on that specific spot you can see in the lower left portion of the bigger screen there. This call came in to San Francisco five at 4 at 4 56 p. M. 172unit complex is burning in the basin part of the mission bay 360 project. The fire got started up on the 6th floor. This company bre properties has apparently five projects under construction. But this one looks like at least this particular building 172 units is going to be pretty much a total loss. That firefighter you see on the smaller screen there were told he is actually putting water on an adjacent building and thats been the goal this whole time is to let in fire burn out. I believe the firefighter that we spoke with says theres not enough water in San Francisco to put the fire out but you can let it burn out. Michelle a resident saw it from the inception get going. She was evacuated. Her neighbors were and she said this project was a growing concern among neighbors because the construction is wood construction and they watch this thing go up and it was massive and they were certainly afraid that. The fear is theres no Fire Suppression unit and its extremely hard to keep it from spreading and hard to put it out. Going to bring in Brian Hackney. We have been talking about the winds that have been in the area right now. Brian, what can you tell us about whats going on . Firefighters look like they have made Good Progress and we still have the weather to contend with. Doug sovern was saying a few minutes ago how will you cinders all over the place any vicinity spread by the wind such as they are in some respects its kind of amazing. Theres wind advisories posted winds are gusting up to 30 miles an hour. Those are very robust winds but they are gusting to 30 miles an hour in oakland and down in san jose. But in the city right now, its only 10 miles an hour. They are going to pick up so the sooner they get it out the better but in the meantime the winds close to the surface are light. You will notice in the wide view of the fire you can see the plume being pushed down to the south and the west because the northeast winds up top, but right at the surface you can see that in the lower left hand part of your screen, so winds out of the northeast the plume gets shouldnted down south. No strong winds at the surface are some good news. It is taking the ash and debris and embers and taking that with it falling on the neighborhood like snowstorms. Thank god nothing happened. Its a surprise from something thats so hot they didnt get any more than that one ignition. To give folks an idea, its a block away from china basin. At one time all this construction is on fill. They filled in the bay. It used to be all water. Lining china basin is nothing but condominiums of which this is going to be the latest about a block up from the waterfront. But you see that long finger of water going in, those people that live all up and down that area. When i talked to art agnos at that location last week, what he said to me is interesting the way they filled in the bay because as ship traffic got the ships got to be bigger and bigger they needed deeper water. So they kept moving out further in the water and then they would fill in the land behind it. So to push the land out to meet those ships that needed a deeper channel. So a lot of that as you say, its filled because they created land. Absolutely. Absolutely i mean, you look at old maps of San Francisco, it looks like San Francisco had a bite taken out of it because it used to be water. Thats where all this stuff is happening. Im curious as to whether they used bay water. Joe said they didnt. Joe, you have been on the ground watching firefighters really take battle on this fire. What can you tell us whats going on now . I just had a chance to talk to joanne hayeswhite the San Francisco fire chief. She is sitting over there where you can see the fire trucks in front of the building that is still burning as we speak. Im going to play a bit of the interview. But first probably the most important thing is that this building under construction was actually left by the construction workers as they left work and then it took a while for the fire to build and then for the Fire Department to be called. So listen in this is joanne hayeswhite the fire chief. No Fire Protection systems in, anything like that. We are told the workers got off around 3 30 or