Mission Bay 360 Building Is On Fire, Quite Literally
March 11, 2014
Half of BRE Properties’ Mission Bay 360 project under construction at Fourth and China Basin has been on fire since 5pm with firefighters trying to contain the five-alarm fire to the 170-unit building on Mission Bay Block 5 which is expected to be a complete loss.
The second-half of the of the Mission Bay 360 development with 190 units on Mission Bay Block 11 appears to have been spared.
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It is a 360-unit market-rate apartments development.
Not 5 teams-5 alarms. That brings hundreds of fire fighters from all over the city.
Your headline is not very funny. I assume you will remove this comment.
I wonder if it’s Eco-Terrorists like EarthFirst that started it.
Yes, much more likely to be EarthFirst burning a commodity building on the shores of a stinkhole than an insurance scam.
I saw a reference that this building used similar materials as the one that burned at Santana Row couplefew years ago.
Was this a wood frame structure? Why are most of the new residential projects in New York and Chicago usually steel and concrete buildings vs. what we get here?
Confused: because people in California are idiots. The whole state is disposable, so we build all the houses out of sticks, without insulation, and we don’t care if the roads all have potholes in their third years, and so forth.
What the heck! Didn’t SF learn from SJ’s Santana Row fire? Down there the fire suppression has to be up and running ASAP as soon as framing can support the pipes.
It is too soon to blame foul play. All it takes is for the crew to leave the site at the end of the day without making sure all the sparks and cig butts are extinguished.
This location is likely to liquefy in a big quake. One way to deal with that is to make the bottom 2-3 floors heavy and solid, usually concrete, to act like the hull of a barge. Then make the upper 3-5 floors of lighter wood frame that will flex but not fail.
It’s not just the fire safety issue but noise and thermal insulation that bothers me about most Bay Area residential housing. Any of us who have lived in Europe or cities like New York or Chicago know that is NOT common to hear footsteps from the floor above or sounds from units adjacent. What is strange to me is even some of the new “luxury” towers in San Francisco have poor noise isolation and thermal insulation construction even though they are made of steel and concrete.
Yes, wood construction performs well in earthquakes and is inexpensive, but construction technology now has advanced to where safer buildings that are fireproof can be created without using wood and other flammable materials.
Any of us who have lived in Europe or cities like New York or Chicago know that is NOT common to hear footsteps from the floor above or
Um, ok. I think this entirely depends on the expense of the housing and has nothing to do with “Europe” or whatever. I barely slept a wink during the two years I lived in London because I could hear the army of pets above me walking back and forth across the apartment floor…
Fire is under control and doesn’t look like it spread, great job by the SFFD!
Block is a mess and apartment buildings across 4th street (Strata/Venue) are uninhabitable tonight.
@wifey lighten up. it’d be different if someone had been injured, and if that were the case I’m sure SS wouldn’t have used a punny headline.
it’s allowed to go up to five stories for apartment buildings of wood frame construction. i suppose it’s not often that a developer would voluntary choose to use more expensive material than is required.
I can’t help but think of the Red Star Senior Housing Building next to the West Oakland BART that went up in flames in June 2012. It was similar construction. What’s left of it is still sitting there in ruin… I bet the reconstruction in Mission Bay will happen faster.
It’s hard to explain puns to kleptomaniacs, because they take things literally.
UPDATE: Mission Bay 360 Building A Complete Loss, Setback For Fourth Street.
I’m glad the headline police did not force editorial change.
Here’s some amateur UAV footage of the blaze:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2h8oDanxkc
(How’s that for tying to disparate SS topics together).