Thumbnail photo: Debris left behind by a fire that burned RVs and other makeshift structures on Waldo Street on Jan. 30. | Photo by Heather Polen
A week after his firefighters responded to multiple blazes near Waldo and State streets, Crescent City Fire and Rescue Interim Chief Bill Gillespie says it’s likely they were maliciously set.
Gillespie, who returned to the fire chief role in December, said the department is still investigating the origin and cause of fires that occurred on Wednesday and Friday. In one incident, there were two separate fires burning 100 yards or more apart, he said, which is too much of a coincidence for it to be incidental.
“(Firefighters) responded into the area, they got there, they had two well-established fires burning in trailers and vehicles around the whole configuration,” Gillespie told Redwood Voice Community News on Thursday, adding that he spoke with Battalion Chief Ray Rook and others who responded. “The fires wouldn’t have been that well advanced if one had spotted from another fire.”
Rook said arrived with six firefighters at about 9:20 p.m. Jan. 30 to find two fully involved fires about 100 to 200 yards apart. The larger fire involved at least two RVs and other structures, including one that someone was living in, he said.
On Jan. 28, Rook and Crescent City Fire and Rescue firefighters responded to the same location at about 3:22 p.m. to find a car that was fully engulfed and an RV that was smoking.
“They weren’t caused by each other,” Rook told Redwood Voice on Saturday, adding that the RV was about 75 feet away from the car.
There were no injuries, though eight people were displaced from their living area as a result of the Jan. 30 incident, Rook said.
In addition to Crescent City, firefighters from Pelican Bay State Prison as well as CalFire responded to the Jan. 30 incident. Del Norte County Sheriff’s deputies responded to both fires, Rook said.
According to Gillespie, the fires that occurred were across the street and “just a little bit further down” from homes on Waldo Street. The responding fire units laid a supply line for water at a hydrant at Waldo and State streets to protect the homes in the area, Gillespie said.
During a drier time of the year, any fires in that area could spread to nearby homes and, potentially, toward U.S. 101, Gillespie said.
“One of the biggest things is (we’re) encouraging people to, if you see smoke or see a fire, to call 911,” he said. “And for the homeowners, make sure you’ve got effective clearance around your home. Make sure you’ve got the address numbers up so we can find where you’re at.”
In an arson investigation, while Crescent City Fire & Rescue will work to determine where the fire started and how it started, Gillespie said determining a potential suspect is the purview of the sheriff’s office.
Though Del Norte County Sheriff Garrett Scott said his office’s policing efforts in Waldo have reduced the number of people living there from more than 100 to about 30, District 1 Supervisor Darrin Short said he’s concerned about the cleanup that will eventually have to happen.
Short, who is also a battalion chief with Crescent City Fire and Rescue, said he was also concerned about drug activity and other crime in the area, including rumors of human trafficking.
During a discussion about continuing to use barriers to curtail illegal dumping and camping near South Bend Avenue — an area commonly called the Swamps — Short and his colleagues considered taking similar measures in the Waldo Street vicinity. The Del Norte County Board of Supervisors hasn’t yet determined a strategy for doing that, however, Short told Redwood Voice on Thursday.
“We haven’t quite figured out a strategy behind where we would put the barriers ‘cause you can’t block somebody out of their driveway unless they’re part of the problem,” he said. “You could, but then you’ll have access lawsuits, and we’re trying to do it as relatively trouble free as we can.”
Short had proposed closing Union Street, Broad Street, South Bend Avenue, National Boulevard and Madison Avenue in February 2024, citing to curtail illegal dumping, camping and other criminal activity. On Aug. 25, 2025 he and his colleagues continued that closure, citing California Vehicle Code 21101.4, which grants local governments the authority to temporarily close roads that are subject to serious and continual criminal activity.
According to Short, before the county erected those barriers in 2024, firefighters were responding to fires in the area every week.
“The problem kind of went away,” he said. “Every so often we get a fire back there, but, like I say, it was literally once a week.”
During the 2022 calendar year, according to Short, firefighters responded to the area 50 times that year for fires and medical calls, while the sheriff’s office responded 280 times.
According to Gillespie, who had been the Crescent City Fire and Rescue chief until he retired in 2022, firefighters would respond to many suspicious fires in the area. Sometimes, he said, it was “different folks, different camps sometimes would try and burn each other out.”
“Very few will actually talk,” Gillespie said. “You start asking questions and they’ll either not provide the information or they’ll stop talking to you or … they won’t talk to law enforcement.”
Gillespie still urges people in the area to call 911 if they see something suspicious.
“If they see people messing around a home or around some place and they haven’t seen them before or they don’t know who they are but they’re around somebody’s property, it never hurts to check those things out,” he said.
