A controlled burn on Sunday, Dec. 4 brought down Jeni and Lyle Stafford’s house on Redrooffs Road, near Coopers Green in Halfmoon Bay.
The house burning served as training for the Halfmoon Bay Volunteer Fire Department, which fire chief Ryan Daley said was an invaluable opportunity for his crew.
“These house burns are getting to be kind of high profile with a lot of environmental concerns right now,” Daley said. “But it’s invaluable training for these guys when we get houses donated by people to burn. To run over 18 guys through live fire training, we’re looking at about $8,000 to $10,000 through an academy, but we can get that in one weekend. It’s quite a big benefit to the crew.”
Homeowner Jeni Stafford called the experience “weird and cool and exciting.”
She said that she and her partner had originally planned on renovating the house, but it proved more financially viable to just tear it down.
“The house was in really rough shape so we had considered doing a renovation or rebuild,” Stafford said. “But it was just really old and awkward. Everybody we talked to said it would be very difficult to renovate it, so we decided to tear it down – but we had heard that the fire department does training exercises and would burn down the house as an alternative.”
The firefighters ran through interior search and rescue as well as fire suppression techniques. Prior to burning down the structure, Daley said that “all tests were done to check for contaminants and any remediation was completed to make it the safest burning structure possible.”
The Staffords made a little event of the burning – they booked Coopers Green for a few hours and invited people out to see their house come down. Stafford said about 40 to 50 showed up.
