“Name that Year” is designed to put your knowledge of Tracy and its newsmakers of the past to the test. Each week, we will publish a news item that ran in a past edition — maybe it was a major event, or a story about a Tracy resident — it’s up to you to determine in what year that particular news item hit the pages of the paper:
• FIREMEN FROM FOUR TOWNS BATTLED A SERIOUS FIRE in downtown Tracy which gutted the laundromat building owned by Carl Steinberg this year.
According to Tracy Fire Chief Dennis DeBlieck, no one was in the building at the time the fire was called in at 2:47 p.m. by downtown employees who noticed smoke coming from the building’s ventilation pipes. DeBlieck said the fire started on the south wall of the laundry room at the front of the building, igniting wall paneling and eventually working its way to the ceiling. He added that there was no equipment — gas, electrical or otherwise — at the point of ignition.
Tracy firemen arrived between two and three minutes after the call to find a building filled with “ 1,200-degree heat,” the chief said. Avoiding the front windows, the first firemen to arrive broke out a south side window and were driven back across the alley, he said, by a ball of fire caused by the fresh oxygen igniting gases.
Fireman Don Polzine suffered a burned wrist. “The force also blew out the front windows,” said DeBlieck. “We were very fortunate that the men had on their air packs and their faces were protected.”
Firemen worked to knock the flames down by entering the building, but the fire had spread through an open area between the ceiling and roof. Burning pieces of ceiling material were dropping on the firemen and DeBlieck pulled his men back out.
By this time, virtually three-fourths of the building was engulfed by the fire and flames were burning through the roof toward the east end. DeBlieck sent Polzine and Randy Swahson up on the roof with a chain saw to cut a hole so firemen could get at the blaze from above. At one point, Polzine’s foot broke through the roof, after which he was pulled out by Swanson and the volunteers were taken off the roof.
• Last week’s answer: A groundbreaking ceremony for a new 7,200 square-foot wellness center in Tracy was observed in 2001.
