SAN MARTIN
– State and county fire investigators were poring over the
charred remains of a 150-year-old Sycamore Avenue house Monday
afternoon, two days after a fire destroyed it.
SAN MARTIN – State and county fire investigators were poring over the charred remains of a 150-year-old Sycamore Avenue house Monday afternoon, two days after a fire destroyed it.
Investigators still had not found the cause or origin of the blaze. A trained fire dog, Rosie, helped them by sniffing blackened support beams for clues.
Meanwhile, the principal tenant of the house, who did not give his name, said he was sick and tired of having people around and asked a reporter to leave the property.
This man lived at the 13987 Sycamore Ave. house with friends, according to California Department of Forestry Capt. Eric Wood. There were four people living there at the time of the fire, Wood said.
All the belongings inside the house were destroyed, Wood said.
No damage or loss estimate was available.
As the house burned, one woman who lived there said all she could do was laugh.
This woman, who also did not give her name, said there was nothing she could do to keep the flames from engulfing her possessions.
Contrary to her stoic words, however, the woman said she was worried about her dogs, which were missing at the time.
According to Wood, the two-story dwelling is at least 150 years old. It belongs to Haruko Iwanaga, who lives next-door in a more modern, one-story house. Firefighters were able to keep the fire from spreading to Iwanaga’s house.
California Department of Forestry firefighters responded to the San Martin home at 9:29 p.m. Saturday and discovered that they were too late to save it.
Instead, they and fire personnel from Morgan Hill (Santa Clara County Fire District), Gilroy and focused on keeping it from spreading.
Two hours later, they had it down to smoldering embers.
“When we got there, it was fully involved,” Gilroy Fire Department Capt. Colin Martin said. “It was a defensive fire. … It was basically a surround-and-drown situation.”
Rosie is specially trained to sniff out chemicals used to start a fire with a nose that is far more powerful than any machine. She and Capt. Dennis Johnsen comprise the Santa Clara County Fire Department’s arson investigation team.
Rosie is a 2-year-old Labrador retriever who has been trained to detect traces of flammable liquids. She is part of a program, headed by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, that provides dogs to local fire departments to aid in their efforts to find the cause of any suspicious fire.
