Photograph by Kathy De La Torre
Saratoga Fire District Capt. Ron Vega watches his crew put out the fire that started when a spark accidentally ignited a gas line.
Fire unintentionally starts demolition early
By Rebecca Ray
Of all the fires he has fought, Saratoga Fire Chief Ernie Kraule said he had never seen one quite like the one that recently swept through a small house on Sarahills Drive.
The fire's spread was aided by the openness of the house--all the doors and most of the windows were missing--and by the 15- to 20-mph winds, which blew the smoke away from the firefighters one minute, and then smothered them with it the next.
By the time the firefighters had the fire under control, it had burned three-quarters of the inside of the house.
Luckily, the one-story house at 21343 Sarahills Drive was unoccupied and was to be demolished, anyway. Its owners, who were staying elsewhere, were going to build a new house in its place and had removed all the furniture, leaving only a few fixtures to be sold.
The fire started in the kitchen on Tuesday afternoon, April 10, when two employees from the salvage company were trying to remove the gas stove to sell, along with the doors and windows. Although the power in the house had been shut off, the gas was still on. The workers found this out when one of them cut the gas line with a saw. The line sparked, and then exploded, sending them across the room.
Six minutes after neighbors called the Saratoga Fire District, the first of the district's two engines arrived on the scene at 1:33 p.m. As usual, district personnel called the Santa Clara County Fire District to assist them, and the county sent one engine, which is usually staffed with three firefighters, said Saratoga Fire District Engineer Don Olson. Twenty personnel from the Saratoga district were involved in putting out the fire.
Upon arrival, the firefighters found the whole house, except for the garage, in flames, said Kraule. The fire had even spread to the attic and underneath the house. Flames leapt from beneath the red-tiled roof and charred the white stucco walls.
Because the winds and the openness of the house caused the fire to spread faster than normal, it took the firefighters 25 minutes--longer than usual--to control it, Kraule said. They were delayed even further when the cap on top of the fire hydrant refused to come off, which forced them to use a smaller nozzle on the side of the hydrant.
It was a Murphy's Law kind of day, Kraule said--everything that could go wrong, did go wrong.
But some things went right. Although the fire had spread quickly, it didn't spread to any trees or other buildings. And the workers, who were outside the building by the time the firefighters arrived, were not badly injured. One of them had minor burns on his face, and the other one wasn't injured. Paramedics from American Medical Response treated the injured worker on the scene and sent him on his way.
Kraule said that although the homeowners' insurance company would decide the cost of the loss, he didn't think there would be any, since the house was slated for demolition.
Saratoga, California Since 1955
