It took more than a hundred City of Los Angeles firefighters nearly four hours to fully control a stubborn non-injury fire that tore through a long vacant restaurant in the northeast San Fernando Valley Wednesday night.

The Los Angeles Fire Department was summoned at 8:41 PM on January 20, 2021 to 8431 Sunland Boulevard in Sun Valley, where firefighters arrived quickly to discover a vacant and boarded one-story former restaurant with fire showing.
 

LAFD crews quickly forced entry into the secured 5,736 square-foot former dine-in establishment, to employ firefighting hand lines against well entrenched flames, as their colleagues ascended ground ladders to perform strategic vertical ventilation in support of their efforts. 

As firefighters forced their way deeper into the compartmentalized interior, they found a heavy fire load, and soon had flames through the roof with signs of structural compromise, forcing their well-coordinated transition to defensive operations outside the structure, that continued for more than three hours. 

The combined effort of 111 LAFD personnel under the command of Assistant Chief Corey Rose, confined the fire to the structure of origin, curtailing flames in 3 hours and 43 minutes.  

No injuries were reported. 

The LAFD RS3 robotic firefighting vehicle was deployed to the scene, but remained in standby mode, as an LAFD excavator commenced a teardown of a dangerously unstable exterior wall. LAFD remained at the scene overnight, expecting to be joined at daylight by LAFD Urban Search and Rescue specialists for a comprehensive secondary search of the premises, and an inspection by the City's Department of Building & Safety.

The cause of this major emergency fire remains under active investigation.

Dispatched LAFD Units: AR1 AR2 BC10 BC12 BC14 BC15 BC5 CM42 E227 E24 E260 E274 E275 E288 E289 E290 E298 E60 E75 E77 E81 E88 E89 E98 EA1 EM14 HE1 HR3 PI1 RA77 RA889 RA98 RS3 T27 T60 T74 T75 T88 T89 T90 T98 UR27 UR88 UR89

Incident Photo Album (pending)