TUSTIN : Family Homeless After Electrical Fire

An electrical fire caused about $250,000 damage to a two-story house early Wednesday, forcing the evacuation of neighbors and leaving a family of four homeless, fire officials said.

No one was injured in the 3:30 a.m. fire in the 14000 block of Deerfield Avenue, County Fire Capt. Dan Young said. No other residences were damaged.

About 40 firefighters worked nearly 50 minutes to contain the fire, which investigators blamed on faulty wiring in the attic, Young said.

Young said the residents should have been suspicious that they had a significant electrical problem Tuesday evening when they had a power outage and could not reset the circuit breaker.

“That should have been their warning. They shouldn’t have gone to bed with a problem like that,” Young said. “Luckily, they had a smoke detector . . . that probably saved their lives.”

The occupants of homes on both sides of the burning house had to briefly evacuate while firefighters fought the blaze.

Fire officials urged residents who experience an electrical outage that cannot be reset at the circuit breaker to call their power company or the fire department.

“We would rather come out and tell them there is no problem than to have something like this happen,” Young said.

Although the house was almost destroyed, about 80% of its contents were saved because firefighters draped protective tarps on the property inside the home, Young said.