The San Bernardino Fire Department was working early Thursday morning to extinguish flames in a 100-year-old abandoned building known as the Harris Building.
Witnesses in the area say the unhoused were living at the site and about five people were inside when the fire broke out just after midnight.
The Harris Building is located across from San Bernardino City Hall and was once connected to the Carousel Mall, which closed in 2017.
In July a A fire broke out in the Harris Building on the fourth floor, where firefighters rescued unhoused victims who were inside the building. City leaders believed there were more than a dozen people inside at the time. The incident prompted city leaders and residents to call for revitalization.
A man who said he was homeless and witnessed the early morning fire expressed concern that things are getting worse for unhoused people in the area.
“I’ve been here for ten years and it’s bad, and it’s not going to get better. It’s going to get worse, and if they do this trick here, it’s going to get a lot worse for the homeless here. It’s a shame,” he said. Billy Biecken.
The demolition of the Carousel Mall was completed in 2023 after it became a hotspot for crime, including burglaries and fires.
The Harris Building formally opened in 1927. According to the city of San Bernardino, it housed a basement, first floor, mezzanine, second floor, third floor and a roof garden. Inside there was a tea room, a lunch counter, a beauty salon and barber shop, a soda fountain, sweets, stationery, a Sage’s Market supermarket and a restaurant called Café Madrid.
Mayor Helen Tran said in July that the city had begun the process of acquiring the building in hopes of revitalizing it, but that the end goal was still far away and an untold number of repairs were expected.
