Fire Kills 1 at La Jolla High-Rise

An elderly woman and her dog were killed in a fire Friday night at the 939 Coast Blvd. residential high-rise in La Jolla, a San Diego Fire Department spokesman said.

The fire started about 8:55 p.m. on the second-floor annex to the 21-story condominium building. The main structure was not damaged, but smoke filtered up to the fourth floor, department spokesman Bob Sumler said.

He said the woman and her pet were badly burned. The blaze was confined to a single unit in the building, which is equipped with sprinklers, Sumler said.

There were 55 firefighters at the scene, he said, and the fire was contained at 9:30 p.m.

A second alarm was put out because of concern for the building’s many elderly residents. Some of the tenants were forced to leave their apartments because of the smoke, but the building was not evacuated, Sumler said.