Fire fighters catch grassland, RV, house fire quickly

When neighbors knocked at our reporter's back window and front door, warning of a fire up the street, our Kern Valley Sun reporter was able to speak directly to fire fighters on the scene.

It was Wednesday June 11, when a house fire and grassfire broke out, at the 200 block of Kellen Way, in Bodfish. Neighbors diligently watered down their homes, and yards and those of their neighbors, as firefighting crews went to work. It was mere minutes before the entire street was filled with engines, trucks, and firemen moving to action.

Captain Andrew Freeborn from the Kern County Fire Department was second on the scene, arriving at the same time as Engine 72. He told the Kern Valley Sun, "Just after 3:00 today, around 3:15, we started getting reports of a mobile home on fire. And that grass was also involved around that property as well. And so resources were dispatched. Because it was a structure fire, as well as grass was involved, the dispatch that was put together was a wild land, wild fire, vegetation response. And that meant we would be having a lot of fire equipment from the Kern County Fire Department as well as resources from the US Forest Service."
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When engine 72 from the Kern County Fire Department arrived on the scene they had a mobile home that was partially involved with fire. According to Freeborn, he could see fire coming out from underneath the bottom of the RV, adjacent to a mobile home.
He also said he could see the flames coming out of the walls of the RV.

All of the front yard and all of the grass around the sides of the mobile home were also on fire. And that fire was spreading behind the mobile home and uphill toward other nearby properties.

The house was saved according to Freeborn. "There was several positive things that occurred. One is you had engine 72 as well as Kern County Fire Department Crew 13, a hand crew that are just right nearby. Both of those resources were on scene within minutes. So you were able to have the firefighters from the station, on the fire engine that are good at structural firefighting. They were able to go to the mobile home that was on fire, start putting that fire out and looking for people inside of that residence. Then the hand crew, Kern County Fire Department Crew 13 was able to start fighting that wild fire, the grass that was burning up the slope, to other homes nearby," said Freeborn.

There was also a wave of additional resources, Breckenridge Hotshots, which arrived on the scene, a tremendous effort of dozens of people on scene within moments to keep the mobile home from burning to the ground

Crews were able to keep the fire to a small footprint preventing any forward progress of the grass fire. There were no injuries to report.

By the end of the interview crews were making sure there were no hot spots on the grounds and that every flame was extinguished before crews were dismissed.

At the outset of the fire, because of the speed of the fire, and weather conditions, firefighter personnel were confident they would not need to evacuate nearby neighbors.