GASSAWAY STRUCTURE FIRE

McKinleyville, CA – On November 18, 2023 at 7:34pm Arcata Fire District was called to an alert for a residential structure fire at the 1100 block of Gassaway Rd. Firefighters arrived on scene to find the downstairs apartment fully charged with smoke. The door was unlocked and found to have an active fire contained to the kitchen. Firefighters immediately extinguished the flames and set to remove smoke from the home.

The fire claimed the life of the family dog after firefighters attempted CPR for approximately 15 minutes. The American Red Cross was called to assist with housing the occupants, and the district issued a SAVE card to the residents of the incident. SAVE is a program funded by the California Fire Foundation that provides immediate, short term relief to victims of fire or other natural disasters.

The cause of the fire was likely due to the power returning on after the outage, and AFD would like to remind all that when the power goes out, to unplug or turn off all appliances you were using while the power was still on.

Arcata Fire would like to thank our mutual aid partners for responding; Westhaven 

Volunteer Fire, Fieldbrook Volunteer Fire, CalFire and the Humboldt County Sheriffs Dept.