Tracy Fire Department division chief Andy Kellogg said a 6 and a 7-year-old were experimenting with a lighter in one of the bedrooms of the house at 120 Tioga Drive when a piece of paper accidentally caught fire and dropped on the bed.
Kellogg said the kids jumped out of the single-story bedroom window after the bed was aflame and ran back into the house to alert their parents. A family of six lived in the house, Kellogg said, and five people were home. Firefighters received the call at 6:13 p.m.
The fire destroyed the room and singed the attic a bit, with the rest of the house just suffering smoke damage. Kellogg said all five people — along with two dogs, a cat and a hamster — made it out of the house without injury.
There was little investigation, Kellogg said, because the children told firefighters what happened.
Kellogg said the house suffered roughly $50,000 in property damage and $25,000 in content loss, as everything inside the bedroom was burned.
The Red Cross provided the family with temporary housing and gave them food and clothing vouchers, Kellogg said.
Contact a Tracy Press reporter or editor at 835-3030 or tpnews@tracypress.com.
What hole have you had your head buried in? (I have a guess)Ruralite is on target with his comments. Wtf does overtime have to do with his comments? You talk about letting statistics speak for themselves. Maybe you should do some homework before you put your fingers on the computer keys. YES!! The rural board has put the very people that elected them (unless they were appointed by their buddies) in a very dangerous position by reducing staffing at their rural stations. The people at the river club should be very concerned. The board has some people on there who run farming operations that have either failed or close to it and pay their workers next to nothing. These are the people making decisions about public saftey. The fire boards incompetence has allowed them to be duped by the financial wizardry of the city of tracy and Zane Johnson. If you have bothered to follow the articles and comments the last few years, you would know what ruralite is talking about. When policy makers who have no concept of what it takes to do the job start making poor decisions about public saftey, it puts everyone at risk.
What are you, a board member? Talk about unbelievable.
Your comments are very threatning, and you speak as if your a Tracy Firefighter. No one in the general public can comment on the departments troubles like you did, so my suggestion, if your a Tracy Fireman, try to be civil about whats going on and dont hide behind a computer pretending to be a citizen. Your making the public feel insecure about two man crews, when really you are probably sitting at one of those rural stations right now typing commenst on the Tracy Press. Leave it alone, and let the statistics speak and prove themselves. Your probably just upset because your overtime is going to decrease. Unbelievable
Quick response in the city limits with 3 person crews saved this to a single room.
If this were out in the eastern rural area with 2 person crews after getting on scene the firefighters would have had to wait for a THIRD engine to arrive from the city before they could make entry, how long does it take to drive out to the River club from the city limits??
Wake up members of rural Tracy, when fire crews go down to 2 people BY LAW they have to wait until at least 5 firefighters on scene before they can go inside, with that time delay this house could have been a total loss. Don't let your rural board allow 2 person crews, unless you don't mind losing all your belongings instead of just a room's worth....
My .02cents