EMERYVILLE (KRON) — About 25 members of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives arrived at the scene of the five-alarm Emeryville fire at a construction site.
The fire happened early Saturday morning in the 3800 block of San Pablo and 40th streets.
“ATF’s role is investigative in nature,” Special Agent in Charge Jill Snyder said. “Our focus is to provide our expertise on fire scene analysis to the Alameda County Fire Department for their investigation. ATF approaches these scenes without any preconceptions about what may have happened, and we allow the evidence to guide us to a conclusion. We could reach one of three conclusions as the cause of the fire. Those conclusions being accidental, incendiary or undetermined.”
The building was under construction at the time of the fire.
There were no reports of injuries and the cause of the fire remains under investigation.
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Shortly after 9:00 p.m. Sunday, the Alameda County Fire Department announced on Twitter that PG&E restored power to nearby homes at 39th and Adeline streets, where power had previously failed due to the fire.
The fire on Saturday was the second time in less than a year that the site has burned.
Last July, a six-alarm fire consumed the site, which was still under construction, as was the case again on Saturday.
When the site was under construction last year, workers were building 105 apartments and 25,000 square feet of commercial space. Rick Holliday, the president of Holliday Development, the company developing the construction site, didn’t respond to a request for a comment Monday.
A crane that was at risk of falling on firefighters and homes near the construction site forced the evacuation of about 35 residents in apartments and condominiums in the area but the crane is no longer a threat and the residents are being allowed to return, Knowles said.