Fire Resources Stretched Thin

They stopped responding to ambulance calls for medical emergencies in the city for half an hour..

The department called in off-duty firefighters to help cover the city.

It was the stretch between four and five-thirty that was the busiest.

Fresno firefighters had seven fire calls.

Six of those were house fires.

But the largest fire pulled 40 fire fighters to a utility yard at Shaw and Blythe.

This photo from the Fresno fire department shows the intensity of the fire that burned near Shaw and Blythe in northwest Fresno.

The fire started in grass and high winds pushed it into a storage yard for PG&E and Southern California Edison.

Utility poles caught fire. And 500 of them burned.

“These wind conditions will continue throughout the night. So that concerns us. We don't want to have any type of rekindle,” said Fresno Fire Chief Rob Brown.

Fire fighters will stay on site overnight as a precaution.

Six other fires were burning in the city while this one was being fought.

And FresnoCounty and other nearby fire departments had fires of their own to fight, like this one in Del Rey where a grass fire spread and burned a building.

So the city of Fresno couldn't call on other departments for help.

“This is the kind of nightmare scenario. We have a day like today where we are busy, our neighbors we depend on for mutual aid are all deployed on other fires,” Brown said.