Elevator, fire alarm out after dumpster fire at Modesto’s Ralston Tower senior housing

The Ralston Tower senior community on 17th Street in downtown Modesto was without elevator service and fire alarms Monday night after a fire in a dumpster inside the 11-story building.

The fire occurred about 7:15 p.m., said Susan Rocha, night manager at the building. Someone may have dropped a burning bag of trash down a garbage chute, starting the dumpster fire, she said, because there’s restricted access to the ground-floor bin.

There were no injuries or evacuations, Rocha said. About 90 minutes after the fire, nearly all of the building’s 178 residents were in their rooms, she said. A few residents were stuck downstairs because of the elevator failure, she said, and about a dozen residents either went to stay with family members for the night or called cabs to go to hotels or motels.

Randy Anderson, a battalion chief with the Modesto Fire Department, confirmed that aside from some people who evacuated the ground floor, “everyone else we sheltered in place.”

The department turned off the elevators to prevent anyone from the upper floors from entering the area of the fire, he said, and when firefighters found that water had entered the elevator shaft, elevator service was kept shut off as a safety measure. A service technician from the elevator company was expected to work Monday night to restore service.

Similarly, someone from the fire-alarm company has to go to Ralston Tower to replace the sprinkler head above the dumpster and to reset the alarm system. Anderson was not sure that would happen Monday night, but said if it did not, a Ralston Tower employee would keep fire watch overnight.

“Our fire prevention bureau will do an inspection tomorrow, to make sure it’s all up to code again,” Anderson said Monday night.

This story was originally published November 17, 2014 at 9:23 PM with the headline "Elevator, fire alarm out after dumpster fire at Modesto’s Ralston Tower senior housing."