Los Angeles Fire Department heavy equipment operators are set to resume systematically clearing debris and potentially work with human remains detection dogs Thursday at a two-story commercial building in North Hills ravaged by fire.
Heavy equipment operators began demolishing the building Wednesday morning. They also removed a wall that had collapsed against the gas meters for an adjacent apartment building, which will allow safe access for SoCal Gas to make any necessary repairs and restore gas service to the apartments, LAFD spokeswoman Margaret Stewart said Wednesday.
A group of human remains detection canines “showed interest” in an area that could not be safely investigated by firefighters, Stewart said.
According to the LAFD, detection canines “are trained to alert to the presence of human blood, bone or tissue. An alert does not necessarily mean a body was located which is why visual confirmation is required.”
Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety personnel visited the building Wednesday to assess the fire damage.
The fire department announced that three apartments were yellow-tagged, but a report from the scene Wednesday afternoon indicated that 41 units had been yellow-tagged, meaning they sustained moderate damage and are inhabitable only on a limited basis.
LAFD personnel responded at 5:43 p.m. Tuesday to 15226 Parthenia St., two blocks east of Sepulveda Boulevard, where they found flames engulfing the two-story structure and threatening a four-story, garden-style apartment building next door, Stewart said.
Seventeen fire companies were dispatched to battle the blaze, with crews fighting the fire in the commercial building from outside the structure while firefighters worked their way floor-by-floor through the apartment complex “for evacuation and location of any fire,” Stewart said.
More than 100 firefighters extinguished the fire in just under two hours.
“One 42-year-old female patient was transported in fair condition for possible smoke inhalation,” Stewart said.
Two women from the apartment building were treated at the scene for smoke inhalation and third woman declined to go to the hospital for treatment, according to the LAFD.
The blaze displaced 27 people — six adults and 21 children –from the apartment building, due primarily to broken glass and smoke damage.
The North Hills fire was the second major emergency fire in the San Fernando Valley in just over 12 hours. A fire gutted much of a commercial building in Winnetka before sunrise Tuesday, causing a partial collapse and injuring one person.
The LAFD’s Arson Section is investigating the causes of both fires.