Woman suffers burns in west Santa Rosa apartment fire

A woman suffered serious burn injuries during a Saturday night fire in her west Santa Rosa apartment that prompted a large-scale fire response and the evacuation of 12 neighboring units in an area densely built with apartment buildings.

The cause of the blaze at the Walnut Creek Apartments on Jennings Avenue was still under investigation Saturday night, but it appeared to have started in the ground-floor unit in which the injured woman and her young adult son resided, Santa Rosa Battalion Chief Matt Gloeckner said.

It was not clear how the woman caught fire, but the fast-growing flames awakened her sleeping son, who threw himself out a back window to escape and found her outside, Gloeckner said.

“He used his shirt to put out the fire on her,” he said.

The woman was taken to Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital for treatment, and her condition was not known in the immediate aftermath of the fire. ?Her name was not immediately available.

The 8:30 p.m. fire presented an extremely chaotic scene, in part because police had originally been called to a fight at the address but instead found a building actively burning and firefighters just beginning to respond, Police Sgt. Hiroshi Yaguchi said.

Emergency responders and dispatchers described confusion and yelling as witnesses realized how quickly the fire was building and firefighters began evacuating all the apartments in the same building.

Multiple fire companies responded, filling nearby roads with their engines and apparatus, and made an aggressive attack that kept most of the fire to the original apartment, which was essentially a total loss, Gloeckner said.

The fire also intruded slightly into a neighboring ground-floor apartment and burned up the exterior wall toward two upstairs apartments, but caused mostly smoke damage in those units, he said.

The incident drew scores of neighbors outdoors to watch, despite the frigid temperatures, and dislocated at least six people from the four damaged apartments.

More people faced displacement depending upon PG&E’s ability to isolate the power supply and restore heat and lighting to the other units in the building, Gloeckner said.

You can reach Staff Writer Mary Callahan at 707-521-5249 or mary.callahan@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @MaryCallahanB.