A church fire in Pacific Heights Monday afternoon was sending smoke blowing through the neighborhood, and a shelter-in-place order was issued due to the excessive smoke.
A fire was burning Monday at the Seventh-Day Adventist Church at the corner of California and Broderick streets in Lower Pacific Heights.
As of 2:10 pm the blaze was elevated to two alarms, and a shelter-in-place order was issued by the SF Department of Emergency Management.
ONE ALARM FIRE
— SAN FRANCISCO FIRE DEPARTMENT MEDIA (@SFFDPIO) June 29, 2026
San Francisco Fire Department is on scene of an active one-alarm church fire at the intersection of California and Broderick. This is a multi-story church. No injuries have been reported. Please avoid the area. pic.twitter.com/cDle0eo52f
UPDATE: Two-Alarm Church Fire in California at Broderick- A shelter-in-place order has been issued for the 2800 block of California Street.
— SAN FRANCISCO FIRE DEPARTMENT MEDIA (@SFFDPIO) June 29, 2026
The San Francisco Fire Department is actively working to extinguish a two-alarm structure fire at a church located at California and… https://t.co/jPwuBZVkg6 pic.twitter.com/m88kgxZsFg
The SFFD said that the fire was burning "throughout the top level of the church" but there were no injuries.
In video from the fire, you can see that the church had been surrounded by scaffolding, so some construction or painting had recently been underway there.
This fire follows a fire about a half-mile down Divisadero Street early Monday morning that caused damage to the popular bakery-cafe The Mill.
The San Francisco Central Seventh-Day Adventist Church, as this church is known, was built in 1892 as a Methodist church, and was purchased by this congregation — co-founded by Merritt Kellogg, the brother of breakfast cereal kingpin Will Kellogg— in 1927.
The building was vandalized four months ago with hate speech — reportedly homophobic and antisemitic slurs — and a 51-year-old suspect was arrested for the crime.
This is a developing story.
