Los Angeles, United States - October 08, 2024

10/08/2024 02:07 am (GMT-0700) | WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif. – LAFD responded to a reported structure fire Tuesday morning at 7766 W. Hollywood Blvd. Firefighters arrived and found a two-story abandoned apartment building with heavy fire in multiple units. Crews worked quickly to establish hand lines and get water on the fire. At one point, crews transitioned to a defensive firefight. After making access to the second floor, crews managed to achieve a knockdown on the bulk of the flames, but there was no official knockdown time at the time of this report. Arson was also requested to the incident at 2:37 a.m. No injuries reported at this time.
SOT Transcript:"It's ah, Captain Cody Weireter, C-O-D-Y-W-E-I-R-E-T-E-R, spokesperson for the Los Angeles City Fire Department. So just after two o'clock Tuesday morning, the Los Angeles City Fire Department responded to the 7766 Hollywood Boulevard for a reported structural fire. Now upon arrival, firefighters found a two-story, boarded-up, vacant, center hall apartment complex with heavy fire storing at the rear of the building, immediately exposing the apartment building next door. Firefighters immediately started to deploy hose lines which was drawn back by the massive amount of heat and the amount of collapse already sustained in the previous burn area. As mentioned, we have had fires here in the past, so it was a danger to firefighters immediately starting to begin that hose line and actually having that ventilation be conducted.
So initially, we were in a defensive posture, meaning we had to attack the fire from the outside and then start to make our way inside, during which time we did sustain one firefighter injury, non-life-threatening. We had a firefighter fall through the floor that was conducting primary search to see if we had any victims inside. Fortunately, that search did come up negative. We did not have any victims or displayed injuries here on site today.
In just less than 30 minutes, 35 firefighters were able to knock down the flames at this time, the fire is still under active investigation from our arson counter-terrorism section, which we're gonna remain on scene to start to investigate really what the circumstance was surrounding this fire, interviewing any witnesses that were here on site, and also kind of determine if we had any video surveillance that might have been taken.
So as you can see behind me, the two-story garden-style apartment was actually a vacant building, boarded up, meaning they had plywood already on the windows. So firefighters had forceful injury issues to get inside of those and be able to start deploying hose lines and water onto the fire itself.
Upon arrival, firefighters did not find any civilians inside. However, we do conduct a full search of the actual building, the first, second, third... The first, second in the basement area to ensure that they did not have any victims.
It's Captain Cody, Weireter, C-O-D-Y-W-E-I-R-E-T-E-R, public information officer for the Los Angeles City Fire Department."