UPDATE, 1:42 p.m.:

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ORIGINAL POST:

Photos: Andrew Goff.

Humboldt Bay Fire rolled out to two separate reports of trailers on fire on opposite sides of Eureka during this sunny Humboldt County midday.

Just after 11 a.m., firefighters were told of smoke pouring out of a trailer behind El Pueblo Market on Broadway. Several trucks and engines and a command vehicle were sent to the scene. At first they could not locate the fire, but they finally tracked it down to the Broadway Trailer Court on McCullen Avenue just west of Broadway.

A kitchen fire had broken out in the trailer, firefighters learned. The trailer’s occupant had extinguished the blaze, but the interior of the trailer was badly burned. “Trailers aren’t built really well for fires,” Humboldt Bay Fire Battalion Chief Kent Hulbert mused to the Outpost’s Andrew Goff, on scene.

About an hour and a half later, the fire department was called to the St. Joseph Outpatient Imaging Center on Buhne Street, just around the corner from the hospital’s main campus, after being alerted to an emergency in the facilty’s “MRI trailer.”

Doing this again.

This time, there was no fire. Hulbert, who was again on-scene, told the Outpost’s Andrew Goff, also on-scene once again, that MRI technicians in the trailer heard a loud “pop,” then smelled something funny. They discontinued the procedure and evacuated the trailer.

Firefighters found no fire, nor any sort of pressing hazmat-type situation. St. Joseph engineers arrived to peer into the trailer’s electronic guts and diagnose the problem. They were still at it as of this writing.

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UPDATE, 3:28 p.m.: St. Joseph’s Hospital has issued a statement on today’s incident: 

Shortly before 1 p.m. today, an employee saw and smelled smoke emanating from an MRI trailer at the St. Joseph Hospital Outpatient Imaging Center on Buhne Street in Eureka.

Adhering to precautionary measures and to ensure the safety of patients and staff, the employee immediately turned off the trailer and called the Humboldt Bay Fire Department, St. Joseph Hospital’s Biomedical Team and the Facilities Department.

After an investigation, it was determined that a fuse blew in the AC unit, resulting in the smoke. An HVAC technician is scheduled to examine the unit this afternoon and it is anticipated that the trailer will be operational by tomorrow.

As a result of the incident, there has been no interruption in service to patients. Two patients who were scheduled to receive MRIs in the trailer this afternoon have been transferred to Diagnostic Imaging Services at St. Joseph Hospital on Dolbeer Street, where they will be seen today.

The Center foresees no further patients being affected.

The engineers.