Firefighters battle a fouralarm blaze near San Francisco’s Alamo Square.
A four-alarm fire damaged at least 17 units in four residential buildings near San Francisco’s Alamo Square on Saturday afternoon, fire officials said.
Firefighters responded to the fire at 1:20 p.m. on the 1500 block of McAllister Street, between Divisadero Avenue and Scott Street, fire dispatchers said.
The blaze started in a second-floor unit in an apartment building at the corner of McAllister and Scott streets and then spread into upper units, including the penthouse, and then into three adjacent buildings, said Mark Gonzales, deputy chief of operations for the San Francisco Fire Department.
Linda O’Roke was cleaning her apartment in a building two doors down on Scott Street when she heard the fire trucks pull up. She hurried downstairs and saw dark smoke billowing into the sky.
She ran back up to her apartment to find her two cats, trailed by police, who banged on her door and yelled, “Out! Now!”
O’Roke grabbed her cats Boh and Penny and waited on the street until she was cleared to return. It was not immediately clear whether her building suffered any damage in the fire.
Windows were broken out in several buildings, and holes were cut into the roofs to battle the blaze.
The fire was contained at about 2:30 p.m.
Few residents were inside the buildings when the fire broke out, Gonzales said.
“If this had happened at 5 in the morning, this would have been worse,” he said.
A firefighter suffering from exhaustion was transported to a hospital, but there were no other injuries reported, Gonzales said.
A dog was rescued from one of the units, he added.
The immediate area was evacuated as firefighters battled the blaze, said Officer Grace Gatpandan, a police spokeswoman.
The Red Cross had set up an aid station at 1484 McAllister St. to assist displaced residents.