Two separate fires displaced 24 Ventura County residents the day before Thanksgiving, authorities said.
A garage fire in Oxnard displaced 20 people who lived in the attached home and sent eight of them to the hospital early Wednesday. An hour later, a fire in a Simi Valley home displaced a family of four, sent three of them to the hospital and killed four dogs.
The first fire was reported about 1:30 a.m. in a home in the 4700 block of Reeder Avenue in Oxnard. Firefighters arrived to find the home filled with smoke and the attached garage engulfed in flames, the Oxnard Fire Department reported.
All 13 adults and seven children were able to get out on their own. Eight of them, including five children under the age of 7, were taken to St. John’s Regional Medical Center in Oxnard with symptoms of smoke inhalation, fire officials said.
Firefighters extinguished the fire within five minutes, officials said. The blaze caused an estimated $180,000 in damage to the garage and home.
Oxnard fire investigators believe the blaze began in a car parked in the home’s driveway and then spread to the garage, but they were not sure what ignited it, said Battalion Chief Gary Sugich.
On Wednesday morning, two burned-out cars sat in the home’s driveway. The front of the large home appeared unscathed except for a small pile of insulation on the lawn.
Owner Maria Martinez said the families living in the five-bedroom home moved in several months ago. There were no smoke detectors in the home, and Sugich said it’s lucky all the residents were able to get out safely.
Story by Ventura County Star
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