Blaze totals YC apartment

Everyone - including Alonzo the bearded dragon lizard - escaped unharmed late Thursday from a fire that gutted the apartment of a young Yuba City couple and their two children.

The two-alarm blaze broke out shortly before 4 p.m. in the bedroom of the second-floor unit at The Tiburon apartments, 1594 Gray Ave., blowing out the bedroom window and igniting exterior siding.

Battalion Chief Gary Garrisi of the Yuba City Fire Department said temperatures in the bedroom reached an estimated 2,000 degrees, igniting other rooms and leaving contents throughout blackened or melted.

Firefighters arrived quickly from a station just a few blocks away and kept the fire confined to the one apartment, said Garrisi, who called it a total loss and estimated damage at $120,000.

“The crews did a great job. It was a hot fire,” said Garrisi.

As firefighters mopped up, the distraught couple stood in the shade of a tree down the street. Their names and the names of their children, one of whom is about 2 years old, were not immediately available.

The Red Cross and Trauma Intervention Program volunteers aided the family.

Garrisi said the cause of the fire is being investigated. Family members were watching TV when the fire started, he said.

A first-floor apartment directly below had slight water damage. An occupant, Michael Bryant, said he was “house-sitting” the lizard and was asleep when the fire broke out.

Someone - not a firefighter - “ran in and said I needed to get out,” said Bryant. He complied, leaving the lizard.

“They told me I’m gonna have to move to another apartment that just became available,” he said.

Firefighters brought out an apparently unfazed Alonzo in a pet carrier.

“It’s what we do,” joked Garrisi.