Just as Stephen Souza was pushing off from his announcement at the steps of the Bicycle Hall of Fame, fire engines and emergency vehicles were rolling in. First, UC Davis’ fire engine and hook and ladder truck, then Station 32 from Davis rolled in.
There was no notable smoke or fire outside of the building. However, a bystander, who reported the incident to 911, told the Vanguard that they began to notice smoke inside the building near the restrooms.
They informed the staff there, and the smoke began to get thicker. At that point, they decided to call the fire department.
There was concern with both the amount of smoke and smell.
Apparently, it was the electrical system that may have overheated.
The fire department took their time to do a full survey, entering both at street level and from a ladder to be certain there was no fire.
According to Chief Bill Weisgerber, “A heating unit overheated and created a smoke-filled atmosphere.”
“Firefighters traced the source of smoke down, isolated the faulty unit, and were able to return the building to safe operation for Hall events,” he added.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
Great pix!
Wow Rifkin….looks like a “well oiled machine”, both City and UCD departments working in unison! Do you think all those firefighters there would be enough if the three story Hall of Fame did catch fire? I’d bet some of those firefighters were up the night before going on calls while you were asleep. I wonder if before the alarm went off if these firefighters were on the job eating, training, watching TV while spending a day or two away from their families preparing for what ever emergency happens in the Davis/UC Davis community.
[i]”Wow Rifkin….looks like a “well oiled machine” … [/i]
There is a good TV show on the History Channel called “American Restoration.” It’s about a family-owned business in which a very skilled mechanic-cum-metalworker-cum-woodworker agrees to tear down and then restore old toys, machines, vehicles, appliances and so on for customers, many of whom are either collectors of these items or they will sell the restored item to collectors.
The tag-line spoken by the owner of the shop is one of nostalgia for “back in the day when manufactured goods had a sense of style and craftsmanship” which is lacking in today’s world. Almost all of the items which are restored come from the late 19th Century up to the late 1950s. After that, craftsmanship and style were replaced by plastic and an ethic of throwing away stuff because it was not worth restoring.
I thought of this in looking at the top two pictures above. In the first one, you can see the Davis Landmark building, the Scott House, in the background. It was built in 1920 for Judge William Scott and his wife and their one daughter. Scott was one of the most important citizens of Davis. He played a big civic role in this community from roughly 1900 to the mid-1930s. His craftsman style house has held up beautifully. Even though it has not been a residence since the 1970s–it was Gizelle’s Travel for a long time and has since been a very nice coffee shop and bakery for desserts named Ciocolat–it exudes the workmanship of its period. It has style and elegance.
By contrast, look at the piece of ess built across the street, the Third & B Building, now used for the Bicyle Hall of Fame, formerly the second home of the Davis Teen Center. It is horrible architecture, both aesthetically and practically. It is an eyesore on the Davis landscape. It reminds me of a badly built plastic toy. You cannot really restore a building like Third & B. You can try to remove some of its cheap and ugly features. But at its core you have a horrible building that no one with taste could possibly like.
Although I would not want it to happen for the sake of the bicyles and the sake of public safety and firefighter safety, having that load of poop burn to the ground could have been a blessing.
Great pictures david! This is a great example of the awesome corporation both departments recieve on incidents. Also, I would like to point out the firefighters with the yellow helmetd are the UCD student firefighters working alongside the fulltime UCD staff.
I can take the architecture of Third & B better than some of the other junk that has been built in town!
Typing comments from a smartphone doesnt work too well… My apologies for the typos. Cooperation and helmeted are the intended words.