A fire that destroyed a woman’s home on Thanksgiving is now at the center of neighborhood complaints in Golden Hill.
The RV is parked in the driveway of an apartment building around 34th and B streets. The charred remains have yet to be removed, and neighbors say it’s an eyesore and they can't stand the smell.
Residents were shaken from their celebrations by the fire that lit up the night.
“I was standing here. You could feel the heat from here,” neighbor Pejsan Tebati said.
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“I heard two pops, then I heard a bang!” tenant Chris Baglin said.
Fortunately, no one was injured but, Baglin, who is a tenant on the first floor of the two-story apartment building, is left with a mess that so far no one seems willing to clean.
“I have no idea what it would cost to haul it out. I just wish I could,” Baglin said.
Baglingave us some history on this RV. He said a couple, rented it three years ago. After two years, the boyfriend got ill and had to move away. The woman stayed for another year until the fire. Since then she’s been living elsewhere but the mess remains.
In the tenant parking lot is the charred motorhome skeleton, but also several bags of trash around it. Two other cars were burned by the fire and also have not been removed.
“The damage, that car was brand new. She had just gotten it. She made two payments on it,“ Baglin said.
There is the sooty chemical smell that hits you when you turn onto the street. The front of the RV blocks the sidewalk and extends into the road.
“It looks like something out of a war zone,” Tebati said.
Several neighbors tell NBC 7 they complained multiple times on the city’s Get It Done app.
We found two complaints, one of which has turned into a code enforcement investigation.
Baglin doesn’t blame his landlord or the tenant who was living in the RV.
“She doesn’t have the money to do it. She didn’t have the money to get it out of here,” Baglin said.
What can be done likely won’t be before the holidays.
“It's going to rain and all that stuff is going to wash out into the ocean. It is a lot of polluted stuff,“ Tebati said.
The last thing neighbors want is the Thanksgiving leftovers at Christmas.
NBC 7 reached out to the city about the problem late Monday afternoon.
A spokesperson said because of the late hour, no one will be available to answer our questions until Tuesday.
