Silverado Canyon Fire Station Burns : Blaze: A garage and two trucks are destroyed as firefighters from the county and nearby cities put out the flames. The cause of the fire is not known.

A county fire station garage burned to the ground Saturday evening in a blaze that engulfed two fire trucks and all firefighting equipment stored there, witnesses and fire officials said. No one was reported injured.

Fire Station No. 14, at 29402 Silverado Canyon Road, was reported on fire by neighbors about 5:45 p.m., said Orange County Fire Department dispatcher Bob Blough. Silverado Canyon is an unincorporated area south of Cleveland National Forest near the Riverside County line.

Sixteen firefighters and six fire trucks arrived on the scene from the county and nearby city fire departments within minutes. The blaze was controlled an hour later. Firefighters were expected to stay at the firehouse throughout the night.

The cause of the fire was unknown late Saturday. The investigation is continuing.

“All we know right now is that the station is (on fire) and all apparatus was still in the station, so firefighters were unable to use any equipment there,” Blough said.

There was one fire engine and one fire patrol truck in the garage, which was built mostly of metal, and “both of them were lost,” Blough said.

Fire officials said a California Department of Forestry station in the area will be used as a temporary fire station until the county firehouse can be rebuilt.

Jamie Young, 16, was driving home on Silverado Canyon Road when she saw bright flames and dark billowing smoke covering the sky, she said.

“It started getting bigger and bigger as the wind came,” she said. “It was, like, totally smoking and more things started catching on fire. I heard a couple of explosions. . . . I looked around and I didn’t see anyone running from the scene.”

Danny Lane, 42, who lives three houses away from the station, said he first noticed that something was amiss when his dogs began barking.

“At the time, we heard a couple booms that sounded like someone was beating on a car hood with a sledgehammer,” he said.

He and his wife ran outside and saw the station ablaze.

“Flames were coming from the front door, about 20 to 30 feet in the air. I could see through the door the air tank exploding,” Lane said. Within seconds, “the smoke became black, the tires were burning and the rescue engines were covered with flames.”

A short while later, electrical wires apparently also caught on fire, causing a spectacular light show, Lane and other witnesses said.

“We watched them put out the fire,” Lane said. “Where the garage was, you could see black frames of the building. Everything inside had melted. The garage . . . actually melted around the fire engines themselves.”

A store clerk at Shadybrooke Country Store, three buildings away from the station, said she was stringing Christmas lights behind the counter when she heard an explosion. People ran into the store, “yelling that the fire hall was on fire,” she said.

She ran outside and saw windows shattering and flames burning through the roof.

“We’ve had fires here with houses, you know,” said her boss, Del Clark. “But the fire station has always put those out; it’s never been on fire before.”