A small fire broke out Wednesday during the removal of San Francisco’s Vaillancourt Fountain, sending flames and dark smoke from a section of the massive concrete sculpture as crews dismantled the controversial artwork at Embarcadero Plaza.
The fire was quickly contained. No injuries were immediately reported.
The flare-up occurred as workers were using torches to remove one of the fountain’s large concrete arms. Rubber tubing inside the section may have ignited during the work, according to the crew on the scene.
Debris inside the sculpture’s welded steel tubes ignited during the torch-cutting work, according to Coma Te, director of communications for the San Francisco Arts Commission.
“Essentially, the tubes are acting like a chimney,” Te said in a statement. “To separate the pieces, the team is torch-cutting the welded steel tubes. As expected, this process produces sparks.”
Crews had staged fire extinguishers at the site, connected to additional water sources and secured backup water access before beginning the work, Te said.
Flames burned from the top of a charred section of the sculpture while construction crews sprayed water on the piece.
The incident came as crews began the heavy-lift phase of the fountain’s removal, a long-planned and legally contested project that has divided city officials, preservationists and fans of the waterfront artwork.
A 265-ton crane was brought in Wednesday to lift off the fountain’s roughly 10-ton cantilevered arms. The pieces are being loaded onto flatbed trucks and taken to storage while the San Francisco Arts Commission, which owns the sculpture as part of the city’s civic art collection, determines what to do with it permanently.
Disassembly work is continuing, Te said, though crews are reviewing how to prevent a similar fire from happening again. The team is working on an updated plan to eliminate the risk of another ignition event, he said.
A welder works on the disassembly of Vaillancourt Fountain in San Francisco on Wednesday. (Yalonda M. James/S.F. Chronicle)
The work moved forward after a state appeals court rejected a preservation group’s request to halt the disassembly. Friends of the Plaza, which is trying to keep in place the 710-ton Brutalist sculpture by Montreal artist Armand Vaillancourt, has sued over the removal. A trial on the fountain’s future is scheduled for August.
City officials have argued that the fountain, which has been dry since the pumps failed in 2004 and was fenced off last year, poses a public safety hazard.
The Board of Supervisors earlier this year approved its removal after the city Planning Department determined the aging structure had deteriorated and posed a public safety hazard. An independent analysis found that the fountain contains toxic materials, including asbestos and lead, and no longer meets seismic safety standards.
“We appreciate that the Court of Appeals denied the stay and allowed the City to continue its work to carefully disassemble and store the fountain in order to study the deterioration and evaluate options,” Jen Kwart, spokesperson for City Attorney David Chiu, said earlier this week.
The removal is expected to cost $4 million and take several months. The Recreation and Park Department is overseeing the project with San Francisco Public Works and the Arts Commission.
Vaillancourt Fountain opened in 1971 as a major waterfront attraction, with water cascading from its blocky concrete arms. It has long been one of San Francisco’s most polarizing public artworks.
The fountain is not included in current plans for a redesigned Embarcadero Plaza and Sue Bierman Park, a 5-acre project near the foot of Market Street. Construction on the new park is expected to begin in late 2026 or early 2027.
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This article originally published at Flames erupt as crews dismantle S.F.’s controversial Vaillancourt Fountain.
