By Anne Gelhaus
The Santa Clara County Central Fire District is investigating two suspected arson fires set within a half-mile of each other in Saratoga early in the morning of Aug. 8.
Bill Hardwicke, the fire district's chief of investigations, said several residents of the Saratoga Avenue-
Quito Road area reported smelling smoke and hearing glass break somewhere nearby. At approximately 4:39 a.m., responding firefighters found a Volkswagen Bug in flames in the parking lot of NFT Ventures on Saratoga Avenue.
En route to this call, firefighters saw that a house on Montrose Street was also burning and dispatched additional units. Both the car and the house were destroyed by the blazes.
Investigators subsequently called on Dolph, the fire district's canine unit, which searched both sites
and sniffed out flammable liquids at both locations. Hardwicke said both fires are being treated as arson and are probably connected.
Since the house also showed signs of being ransacked, Hardwicke said, Santa Clara County sheriff's deputies have been called in to investigate a possible burglary in connection with that fire.
This article appeared in the Saratoga News, August 21, 1996.
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