VIDEO: It was a hot weekend for local firefighters. City and county crews were dispatched to dozens of fires all over Kern. Those fires cost families their homes and local business owners, their livelihoods. The Rea family was sound asleep as this fire engulfed their home on Franklin Avenue in East Bakersfield. It started just before 3am on Saturday. It awakened their neighbors, but not them.
“By the time I ran from my house over to that door,” said their neighbor Keith Petty. “The whole awning was under flames.”
Keith Petty lives across the street and is friends with the family.
“I beat on the door to see if anyone knew it was on fire, no one responded,” Petty said. “Broke that first window to yell into the house and still never heard anything.”