Already damaged vacant home in south Modesto burns yet again

A vacant south Modesto house badly damaged from several previous fires burned yet again Monday morning.

Modesto and Ceres fire department crews responded about 7 a.m. to the report of the fire on the 2000 block of Frazier Street, said Modesto Battalion Chief Randy Anderson.

This was the home’s fourth or fifth blaze, he said. “It was badly damaged from previous fires, so there was not a whole lot left to burn,” Anderson said. “But somebody managed to get a fire going in there.”

The roof largely was gone from past fires, so firefighters took down what was left because it posed a fall hazard.

Crews made quick work of the blaze, extinguishing it within about 10 minutes, Anderson said. The fire was suspicious, but there’s a lot of transient activity in the alleys there, so it will be difficult for investigators to find the person or people responsible, he said.

“Damagewise, there’s not a lot, because there wasn’t much left to it,” Anderson said.

The response to the fire was four engines, two trucks, two chief officers and fire investigators.

This story was originally published September 26, 2016 at 2:41 PM with the headline "Already damaged vacant home in south Modesto burns yet again."