(Photo by Tony Bradley)
ORIGINAL 8:31 PM REPORT: We have arrived in the area of a house fire call on SW Manning. It is alongside the bridge by Luna Park businesses. (map) More shortly. 8:39 PM UPDATE: It’s a house up the Manning hill north of the bridge. No sign of flames or smoke now but still an active scene. We are hearing here at the scene that one room caught fire, extinguished quickly, no injuries reported so far. 8:57 PM UPDATE: We are still on the scene. Incident commanders tell us they don’t know yet how it started. A neighbor who was first to see the smoke tells us the homeowner has been remodeling but wasn’t home when this started. An animal control worker has just safely caught a dog that ran off during the fire chaos. (iPhone pic added 9:25, dog in foreground as it ran past us toward the officer)

Several witnesses tell us the fire was primarily in the back of the house. The neighbor who first saw the smoke told us he ran up to bang on the doors and windows and make sure nobody was inside. He says the homeowner’s been working on largely do-it-yourself remodeling for a long time. The street’s narrowness and steepness made it a tough squeeze for all the crews that responded – some had to park down the hill in a dirt clearing along the street that runs between Admiral/Manning and Avalon – and a few more waited down by the Luna Park businesses in case they were needed.