Original Joe's really needs to beef up its fire insurance and clean its kitchen flues. The flagship location in North Beach, which moved there after its original location burned down, suffered a small fire on Wednesday night — the owners' third fire in 20 years.

San Francisco firefighters were called to the scene at Union and Stockton streets just after 8 pm Wednesday after heavy smoke was seen rising from the roof of Original Joe's.

As the SFFD reported, the fire was in a chimney or exhaust flue, coming out of the kitchen, and it was contained as of 8:19 pm.

Part of Union Street and a section of Stockton Street were both temporarily closed for the firefight and cleanup, and the restaurant and a neighboring building were both evacuated during this process.

As KTVU reports, it remained unclear Wednesday night whether the restaurant suffered any serious damage. Original Joe's has not posted any update to its social media.

No injuries were reported and the SFFD said the building was turned back over to the owners Wednesday night.

This flagship Original Joe's opened in this space (formerly Joe DiMaggio's and, even earlier, Fior d'Italia) in 2012. The restaurant relocated and reopened here after an October 2007 fire shut down the original location on Taylor Street in the Tenderloin. Third-generation owners John and Elena Duggan, who are brother and sister, have since expanded the business to include Little Original Joe's locations in West Portal and the Marina, as well as the revamped Daly City Original Joe's, and in 2024 they opened Elena's, a Mexican-American restaurant in West Portal.

A third Original Joe's location that opened last August in Walnut Creek also suffered a kitchen fire that shut it down just days after its grand opening. That location reopened in October.

We'll update this story once there is word about whether the North Beach restaurant will be open as usual tonight.

Firefighters in the East Bay were forced to initiate a partial evacuation of a Hayward convalescent home Tuesday afternoon after a small fire broke out.

The Alameda County Fire Department was called to the Driftwood Healthcare Center on Hesparian Boulevard around 2:30 pm on a report of a fire.

"Upon arrival, crews encountered smoke and fire originating in the basement that had extended into the roof area of the building," the fire department says in a social media post. "As a precaution, 18 residents were temporarily evacuated to the front of the convalescent home while firefighters conducted an aggressive interior fire attack and checked the building for fire extension and air quality concerns."

As KPIX reports, some of those 18 residents were evacuated in beds or wheelchairs.

"They were very professional about it," says one of those evacuees, named John, speaking to KPIX. "Got all the people out that were in the gurneys and stuff like that, that were permanently in bed and can't get up or nothing like that. They moved them out real fast."

The fire reportedly originated in a basement laundry room in the facility. No injuries were reported.

A fire Tuesday night in San Francisco's Tenderloin damaged a six-story building and displaced 25 people, but thankfully no one was injured in the blaze.

The fire broke out around 11:30 pm Tuesday on the second floor, in the light well of a six-story building on the 200 block of Turk Street, between Jones and Leavenworth streets.

The one-alarm fire escalated to two alarm, as the San Francisco Fire Department explains, when the fire traveled through the light well up to the roof of the building.

As KPIX reports, 25 residents of the building were displaced. The extent of the damage to the building is unclear, but the fire department noted they were continuing to extinguish flames in the walls of the structure over an hour after the fire began.

No injuries were reported, and the cause of the fire is under investigation.

Photo via Citizen app

One person was found dead in a single-alarm fire at a residence in SF’s Portola District Tuesday evening, which investigators believe began in the home’s kitchen or living room, causing substantial damage to the interior of the structure.

As KRON4 reports, the fire was reported at 9:24 pm Tuesday on the 500 block of Dwight Street in San Francisco’s Portola District, and firefighters found one person dead inside the building.

It’s believed the fire began in the kitchen or living room, and the interior of the home sustained significant damage, according to KRON4. A nearby home also sustained damage.

Firefighters extinguished the fire, and authorities are investigating. The city medical examiner will determine the cause of death for the deceased. The victim has not been publicly identified.

Image: San Francisco Fire Department

Top image: Photo via SFFD/X

There was a large fire department and police response near Sixth and Market streets Wednesday night, which stemmed from a fire inside an SRO unit.

The fire broke out just after 9 pm Wednesday in a room on the fourth floor of the Seneca Hotel at 34 Sixth Street, a single-room-occupancy hotel.

The San Francisco Fire Department said on social media that the fire had been contained to the room of origin, but left the room's occupant injured.

The fire victim's condition is not known.

The Chronicle reports that the cause of the fire is believed to be a lithium ion battery.

The SFFD has previously said that lithium-ion battery fires tripled in frequency between 2013 and 2023, with the rise of mobility devices like e-scooters, and these fires hit a record high of 58 recorded in the city in 2022. This led to new city legislation two years ago changing the fire code for the charging of personal mobility devices (PMDs). This included a ban on the use of extension cords or power strips to charge PMDs indoors.

Over a ten-year period, lithiu-ion battery fires were estimated to have caused $10.6 million in property damage in San Francisco, as well as 13 injuries, and one death.

Fire safety may be important, but irate condo owners from Nob Hill, Telegraph Hill, the Marina, and Pacific Heights stormed an SF City Hall committee hearing Monday to demand a delay on a new sprinkler mandate for their units.

One way to get San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie’s attention is to be a person who has money. That’s what a group of condominium owners on Nob Hill, Telegraph Hill, the Marina, Pacific Heights, and Russian Hill learned in late 2025 when confronted with a new mandate that high-rise condominiums built in 1975 or earlier should have sprinklers for fire protection. The condo owners squawked because they claimed this would cost up to $300,000 per unit, and Lurie dutifully obliged by introducing legislation to delay the sprinkle mandate by five years.

Well, that Lurie legislation came up Monday before the SF Board of Supervisors Land Use and Transportation Committee. And that committee voted unanimously to kick the can on the sprinkler requirement five years down the road from 2027 until 2032, as more than 100 homeowners lined up to complain that the fire safety rules would burden them with financial hardship.

There is also the argument that the onerous sprinkler requirement — which is for all buildings over 11 stories that don't have at least two egress stairwells deemed fire-safe for up to two hours — is having a depressing effect on real estate values for units in the 126 buildings that are impacted, as it looms over the properties' futures. And cost estimates to install the sprinklers may be off because of the hazardous materials — like asbestos — that will be unleashed once you start cutting into walls in these historic highrises.

“With a stroke of gavel you have taken money out of these people’s pockets,” San Francisco realtor Dona Crowder comlined during public comment. “Their values have gone down and they could be underwater. This is today. We can’t sell the units or the buildings today without a very significant effect on the value. That is a fact.”

The delay approved Monday is not a final decision. The matter still needs to go before the full SF Board of Supervisors.

The new sprinkler rule was a part of the routine updating of the city’s fire code that happens every three years. And opponents say that the measure was passed without studying the feasibility of its implementation, or the individual financial burden it would create for nearly 10,000 homeowners.

But delay measure's co-sponsor, Supervisor Danny Sauter, got his condo constituency the relief they wanted, even if they are still pushing for the entire code change to be repealed.  

“One thing I heard loud and clear is that what we are doing today, the changes to the fire code are not enough, that delay is not enough,” Sauter said before the vote. “This is going to continue to cause a lot of anxiety.”

The proposed sprinkler rule would apply to around 9,800 units in mostly pre-1975 buildings. The delay legislation not only puts off implementation for five years, but also appoints a committee to study its feasibility. And a blue-ribbon committee is often a great way for City Hall to make sure that nothing ever gets done about something, which may be exactly what the condo owners are hoping for.

Related: SF Residential and Commercial Fires Troublingly on the Rise, Fire Department Says [SFist]

Image: SFGovTV

An early morning fire left one person injured on Nob Hill Monday, and it's unclear how badly they were injured.

The fire broke out around 3 am at an apartment building on the 1000 block of Leavenworth Street, between Pine and California streets.

The San Francisco Fire Department announced on X that this was a one-alarm fire that was "contained to a apartment room," and one person was hospitalized with injuries.

The fire was ultimately contained to that room of origin, and images posted by the SFFD suggest that the blaze was in a first-floor unit of a three-story building at 1040 Leavenworth Street.

The extent of the injured person's injuries were not made public.

No suspected cause for the fire was being publicized.

This incident follows a February 10 fire in an SRO or studio unit in North Beach which left a woman injured, and in which the fire broke out in severe hoarder apartment that was piled nearly to the ceiling with stuff.

This is a developing story.

A woman reportedly suffered severe burns and was hospitalized after a fire broke out in her overstuffed, single-room occupancy apartment unit in North Beach on Tuesday.

The fire broke out around 8:30 am Tuesday inside a tiny unit at 75 Fresno Street — a small alley between Broadway and Vallejo Street, off of Romolo Place, in North Beach. Smoke was reportedly visible coming out of the apartment window into the alley.

A spokesperson for the San Francisco Fire Department, Lieutenant Mariano Elias, tells the Chronicle that firefighters had difficulty opening the door of the apartment due to the "hoarding conditions" inside.

The woman trapped inside consequently had to be rescued through the apartment window.

The elderly woman reportedly suffered second-degree burns on 75 percent of her body, and was rushed to the city's burn unit at St. Francis Medical Center.

The SFFD subsequently released the photo below of the 100-square-foot apartment unit, which was piled head-high with kitchen items, luggage, and much more.

It's certainly unclear where a person would live or sleep in that space!

The suspected cause of the fire has not been released.

A fire broke out in a pier building on Pier 28 Tuesday morning, the second here in just over a year, leading to a subsequent traffic snarl in the area of Embarcadero and Bryant streets.

The one-alarm fire on Pier 28, which produced smoke that billowed over the Bay, was reported by multiple 911 callers just before 10:30 am, according to the San Francisco Fire Department.

Fire crews have extinguished the fire, but as of 11:30 am, the Embarcadero remained closed so traffic between Bryant and Brannan streets, and drivers were being told to avoid the area.

The firefight was aided by the SFFD's firefighting boat, the Saint Francis, which is stationed nearby at the floating fire station at Pier 22 1/2.

No injuries were reported in the blaze, and the cause of the fire has not been determined.

A previous fire occurred at this same pier just over a year ago, in December 2024.

A fire broke out in the kitchen of Mel's Drive-In on San Francisco's Lombard Street early Tuesday, causing significant damage to the restaurant.

The one-alarm fire broke out sometime after 4 am Tuesday, at 2165 Lombard Street between Fillmore and Steiner, and the San Francisco Fire Department said the source was the flue area in the diner's kitchen.

The first video from the scene taken by the SFFD was posted at 4:52 am.

Subsequent video taken after the fire was mostly extinguished shows fairly significant damage inside the restaurant, though the extent is not entirely clear.

The seating areas, counter, and jukebox at the front door remained undamaged.

This Mel's Drive-In location on Lombard was not the original — and is also not part of the Originals Mels brand, seen elsewhere in the Bay Area and Sacramento, as a result of a father-son fallout in the 1970s.

But this location was the first in a revival of the diner brand in 1985 that came after the original Mel's Drive-In, on South Van Ness, was demolished. That location, which originally had parking for 110 cars with carhops providing service, stood in for Burger City in George Lucas's American Grafitti.

A wave of classic diner nostalgia was sweeping the country around the 80s, also marked by the swankier Fog City Diner opening on the Embarcadero. And Mel's Drive-In would subsequently revive their location on Geary Boulevard in the Richmond District, and open new locations on Van Ness Avenue, and later on Mission Street near the Metreon. The franchise also expanded in Los Angeles, where four locations remain today.

The fire is now out, but a warehouse in Berkeley is now “completely destroyed” after a Tuesday morning fire ripped through the place, a fire that was visible from Interstate 80.

The Berkeley Fire Department got a call just after 4:30 am Tuesday morning about a giant warehouse fire in the Gilman District that pretty much destroyed that warehouse, as KTVU reports. Berkeley Fire Department deputy district chief Keith May told that station that crews found the building "fully engulfed in fire" upon their arrival. And as the KTVU news segment below shows, the fire was producing huge flames that were not only visible from I-80, but were right next to I-80 as early morning commuters drove by.

The two-alarm fire broke out at Second and Camelia streets in Berkeley. While crews had the fire out in just over an hour, KTVU described the current condition of the warehouse as “completely destroyed.”

That warehouse has been long vacant, and was last occupied in 2018 by a steel foundry called Pacific Steel Casting. But the now-burnt and destroyed warehouse is directly adjacent to Forge and Tool warehouse (also currently vacant), so this could have spread and been worse.

NBC Bay Area reports the fire was under control as of 5:35 am. And the warehouse being long-vacant, fortunately, no one was inside, and there are no injuries associated with this fire.

According to Berkeley fire officials, the cause of this fire remains unclear.

Related: East Bay Media Center Burns In Monday Morning Fire [SFist]

Image: berkeleyfiredept via Instagram

Insult has been added to injury for the estimated 200 people who were displaced by Monday morning’s apartment fire in Oakland’s Uptown, after their landlord issued them all eviction letters.

You may recall the early morning apartment fire in Oakland's Uptown neighborhood at 19th Street and Broadway on Monday of this week, which also damaged the ground-floor Dope Era clothing store owned by local hip-hop icon Mistah F.A.B. There were three hospitalizations from smoke inhalation, and one Oakland firefighter was treated for minor injuries. Though a new Wednesday morning report from KTVU notes that all of those individuals have fully recovered.  

But that same KTVU report also contains some very shocking news about those displaced residents: the displaced residents of those 43 apartment units have all received eviction notices from their landlord, and on top of that, these eviction notices arrived “just hours” after their homes were destroyed in the blaze.

KTVU even obtained copies of the eviction notices, which read, “All leases are hereby terminated. You will receive a full refund of your security deposit after you retrieve your personal belongings from the premises and return all keys."

The building has of course been red-tagged because of its condition after the fire. But legal experts say that this is not cause for eviction of tenants who are current on their rent.

"You can't just terminate a tenancy just because there is a fire in the building," Centro Legal de la Raza managing attorney David Hall, managing attorney with Centro Legal de la Raza told KTVU. Hall also noted that the landlord could be on the hook for relocation payments if the (still-undetermined) cause of the fire turns out to be the fault of the landlord.

I’m no liability lawyer, but it sounds like this fire may not have been the landlord's fault. One evacuated tenant told KTVU that there was a certain apartment in the building where "People were storing scooters in there and charging the batteries, and a bunch of stolen stuff was being stored in there.”

The landlord is Ted Dang, who owns the building along with about a dozen other partners. Dang was not directly quoted by KTVU, but according to that station, Dang argues that “the notice was not intended as a formal eviction, but rather a way to inform tenants of the building’s current uninhabitable status.”

That doesn’t sound like what the notices said! Sidebar: this is the same Ted Dang who ran for Mayor of Oakland in 1994, coming in second to Elihu Harris.

Either way, the displaced tenants are reportedly being offered mere 30-minute windows (through Friday) to come and collect their possessions. Meanwhile several of those tenants apparently worked for nearby Oakland restaurants Jaji and Parche, and those restaurants’ beverage director has started a GoFundMe for the Oakland fire victims to help those employees get back on their feet.

Related: Five Residents and One Firefighter Injured In Apartment Fire In Downtown Oakland [SFist]

Image: @OaklandFireCA via Twitter

A three-alarm fire that broke out Monday morning at a building in downtown Oakland has left six people with injuries, including one firefighter, and three were taken to the hospital for smoke inhalation.

The fire began around 7:15 am at a five-story, 43-unit building at 19th and Broadway in Oakland, as KTVU reports. The address appears to be 1770 Broadway, but the fire appears to have been confined to a rear portion of the building on the 19th Street side, above Gai Noi, a Thai restaurant.

The ground floor of the building is also home to Dope Era, a clothing store owned by legendary Oakland rapper Mistah F.A.B., per NBC Bay Area.

As Mistah F.A.B. told KTVU, "My store is the least of my worries. I think the most important thing is to make sure that everyone's evacuated safely, that there's no deaths and whoever was affected, that they're okay."

Five building residents were treated at the scene for injuries, and three of them were taken to an area hospital to be treated for smoke inhalation, as KTVU reports. One firefighter also suffered a minor injury.

As Oakland Fire Chief Damon Covington tells the Chronicle, the fire appears to have begun on the second floor of the building and spread to the floors above it.

Residents described thick black smoke pouring down the hallways of the building.

The fire was reportedly brought under control as of 8:40 am.

The cause of the fire is under investigation.