Residents in north Gilroy had a rude awakening early this
morning when an explosion rocked a two-story house on Eden
Street.
Residents in north Gilroy had a rude awakening early this morning when an explosion rocked a two-story house on Eden Street.
About 4:45 a.m., the Gilroy Fire Department received a call from a homeowner who woke up to the smell of smoke, then felt an explosion downstairs, Battalion Chief Phil King said. The blast – which may have been caused by gas or a backdraft – “blew the garage door panels out across the street,” damaging several cars, he said.
The woman, after calling 911, ran back upstairs to get her dog, but made it back outside safely, King said.
“She was cutting it kind of close,” he said.
Firefighters arrived at the house five minutes after the call, King said.
“When we got on scene, you had fire blowing out both sides” of the garage, he said. “It looked like a pot on the stove kind of thing.”
Firefighters did not know if there was anyone inside the house, so they split up, some searching the house and some fighting the fire, which had already escaped the garage and moved into the interior of the house on both stories, he said. Then, the fire traveled up an empty space in the wall in the center of the house and into the attic. This caused complications for firefighters, as they had to pull off tile from the roof, cut a hole in it and fight it from above, King said. It took firefighters just over an hour to get the blaze under control.
Without the attic fire, “normally we’d get a control quicker than that on something like this,” he said.
Despite the hour that the three-alarm fire burned, only one of the two nearby houses – each of which sat only about 10 feet away – experienced any damage. The damage was also minimal – some singing of a window and window frame.
While firefighters are still investigating the cause of the fire, the likelihood of it being a gas fire is minimal, King said. This is because the 911 caller said she smelled smoke before the explosion. Gas explosions are usually instantaneous and not preceded by fire and smoke.
By contrast, if the explosion was caused by a backdraft, there could have been smoke before the explosion, King said. In a backdraft, a fire smolders in a contained area – such as a garage – until it uses up a large portion of the available oxygen and gets close to suffocating it, he said. Then, a sudden rush of oxygen – such as an inrush of air coming from a garage window broken by heat – causes the flames to flare back up, releasing gases that cause a tremendous build-up of pressure and an explosion.
A backdraft is, in essence, like what a person will see when they cover a votive candle with their hand, almost suffocating the flame, and then pull their hand off, allowing the fire to flare back to life, King said.
In the case of this morning’s explosion, it was so violent that one Volunteer in Policing member heard it from about a half-mile away, King said.
Twenty-three firefighters, three battalion chiefs and one investigator from the Gilroy Fire Department, Hollister Fire Department, Santa Clara County Fire Department and South Santa Clara Fire District responded to the blaze.
King expected crews to be working until at least 9:30 a.m. cleaning up the scene.
View Eden Court house fire in a larger map
