Fire destroys East Bay Drive home

A fire destroyed an East Bay Drive home just after midnight on Thursday, causing so much damage that the home is in the process of being demolished.

“I have deemed the building unsafe and we’re moving toward demolishing the house as being an unsafe structure,” said building commissioner Scott Kemins.

The fire is believed to have started during a cooking mishap by the sole occupant of the home, located at 318 E. Bay Drive, said Long Beach Assistant Fire Chief Antonio Cuevas.

“He was cooking corn, that’s what he told us,” Cuevas said. “We had the fire marshals come down and they investigated it and with their determination they believe it was due to him cooking.”

Cuevas said that the Fire Department received the emergency call from the Long Beach Police Department after a next-door neighbor called in a complaint for what was initially believed to have been a fight in the kitchen of the East Bay Drive home.

“When the police department arrived, the house was on fire and said to notify the Fire Department,” Cuevas said. “It was just [the tenant] in the house screaming. He came out of the house like a bat out of hell and came charging at me screaming, ‘The house is on fire!’”

According to Cuevas, the home was filled with clutter and the “pack rat” conditions made it difficult for firefighters to extinguish the blaze, which took more than an hour to put out.

“That was another reason why the house [fire] took off the way it did,” Cuevas said. “When we pulled up we had fire blowing out of every window and due to the fire conditions, with the amount of contents he had in the house, made the actual fire difficult to extinguish.”

Cuevas said that approximately 70 firefighters from the Long Beach Fire Department and Point Lookout-Lido, Island Park and Oceanside fire departments responded to the scene.

“It was a heavy-fire load and also it was really hot last night so we called in the three sources to cover our own selves to let guys cool down and let other guys go in,” Cuevas said. “The whole interior [of the house] is just demolished,” “It is very structurally unsound, so it has to be demolished.”

The tenant was transported to Long Beach Medical Center, though his injuries are not believed to be serious. Cuevas said that the Red Cross was notified after the tenant’s house being condemned.

“I don’t know what his outcome is at this particular point,” Cuevas said.