A structure fire in the 400 block of North Grant Street caused an estimated $300,000 in damage to a house on Wednesday morning.

Manteca Fire Battalion Chief Kyle Shipherd said the cause was attributed to a suspected “warming fire” in the middle of the floor in a room at the rear of a series of apartments. He noted that fire crews answered a neighbor’s call of smoke in the area. They had a difficult time finding the fire because windows and doors had been boarded up after two previous fires in the past 18 months.

He said that the condition of the structures on the property are now not good for the neighborhood. He will be working with the city to condemn the property so it can be torn down. Shipherd said fire crews searched the buildings for transients after finding filled grocery carts at the back of the building.

The structure reportedly had scatterings of human feces throughout its rooms.

Manteca Fire Department had some 14 firefighters on the scene along with an engine from the Lathrop-Manteca Fire Department.