Police Officers Help Firefighters at Blaze

Police officers helped firefighters combat an apartment fire Friday night, demonstrating, police said, the cooperation between the city’s financially strapped public safety departments.

The fire, which was started by a candle burning near a child’s bed, destroyed the $75,000 building which housed three apartments and left seven people homeless. No one was injured.

According to Santa Paula Fire Capt. John Harber, a woman and her three children lived in the apartment. A candle was burning in a front room when the mother left the children with two teenage girls about 7 p.m. Several hours later, a smoke detector alerted the baby-sitters to the fire, which had reached a bed where a child was sleeping.

All the occupants escaped and one of the baby-sitters called 911 from a nearby pay phone.

The police arrived about 11:30 p.m. at the three-unit building at Olive Street and Harvard Boulevard. When three firefighters from one of Santa Paula’s engine companies arrived, the police officers attached a line to a nearby hydrant.

While the firefighters attacked the fire from the front of the building, Officer John Coffelt, who has been a volunteer firefighter in Oxnard, used a hose to prevent flames from spreading to another, separate apartment unit. Other Santa Paula firefighters and crews from Ventura County and Fillmore fire departments also helped battle the blaze.

Police Sgt. Steve Carter said few of the department’s officers are trained to fight fires, so it was fortunate to have Coffelt on the scene. In his 20 years with the Police Department, Carter said, he had never seen officers assist in fighting a blaze.