Two midcentury homes on Modesto’s Scenic Drive badly damaged by three-alarm fire

Two homes built in the 1940s or ’50s suffered major damage in a fire Monday evening, the Modesto Fire Department reported.

The initial report, of a garage on fire on the 3000 block of Scenic, east of Lakewood Avenue, was made just before 7 p.m. As units from the Modesto, Ceres and Stanislaus Consolidated fire departments were responding, the call was upgraded to a second alarm based on the location and the volume of smoke seen, MFD Battalion Chief Andrew Hunter said Tuesday morning. The homes back up to the Dry Creek bank.

The first units on scene reported a residence with an active garage fire and a second residence immediately threatened, showing signs of an attic fire, Hunter said. An electrical line also was involved, initially hampering fire-suppression efforts, he said.

Occupants of both homes had evacuated, so crews initially fought the blaze from the exterior, Hunter said. As additional units arrived, they were able to make interior attacks.

Based on the fire level — about half of the first home immediately was involved, and less than a quarter of the second — a third alarm was sounded. That drew additional units from all three departments.

Having that extra manpower allowed for better salvage of the homes’ contents, Hunter said, and let firefighters rotate duties and get brief rest. One firefighter suffered minor injury and was evaluated on scene, the battalion chief said.

The fires were brought under control in about one hour, 40 minutes, Hunter said. The nature of the homes’ structures, including a number of apparent remodels, required considerable overhaul work, he said.

On one of the homes, “the insulation used initially was redwood sawdust, so when fire gets into that, it just smolders along,” Hunter said. The other home had been re-roofed three times, he said, with the underlying material not removed. That required extensive overhaul to ensure the fire was fully extinguished.

Crews were on scene a total of five hours. and checked on the structures throughout the night to ensure there were no flare-ups, Hunter said.

No monetary estimate of the fire damage was available Tuesday, and the cause of the fire remains under investigation.

This story was originally published May 28, 2019 at 8:47 AM.