GILROY
– A pillar of black smoke could be seen from the southern edge
of town as an abandoned house burned just outside the northern city
limit Thursday morning.
GILROY – A pillar of black smoke could be seen from the southern edge of town as an abandoned house burned just outside the northern city limit Thursday morning.
California Department of Forestry investigators have yet to determine the cause of the blaze, which heavily damaged the house at 315 E. Las Animas Avenue.
As city firefighters doused the flames, a barn owl – rarely seen in daylight – glided through the smoke and circled repeatedly over the house, hinting that the old structure might have contained its nest.
The house had also served as a resting place for 20-year-old Rick Flores, who said he is a professional magician who worked in a Las Vegas casino before coming to Gilroy a week or two ago to see his fiancée. He slept in the house periodically when he wasn’t staying with friends and acquaintances, he said.
Flores slept in the house the night before the fire and admitted he was inside when the fire started, but he said he had nothing to do with starting it. Rather, he said, three partying youths who woke him up and sent him packing as the fire was starting may have been responsible. When fire officials and police questioned Flores, he cooperated amiably, fire officials said, and eventually they let him go.
Flores told The Dispatch he was asleep in the house until less than 30 minutes before firefighters arrived.
“I was woken up,” he said. “There were three kids in there. They were smoking weed and … drinking, … and they said, ‘You should probably leave.’ ”
Flores said he packed his things and, as he left, noticed some kind of small fire inside. As he walked westward on Las Animas Avenue, he looked back and saw smoke rising from the house.
He kept walking, he said, but employees from South County Housing – headquartered across the street from the abandoned house – drove up and asked him if he’d started the fire. He said he hadn’t, but he agreed to get in their truck anyway and return to the scene of the blaze.
Firefighters arrived minutes later, at 10:05 a.m., after receiving the call at 9:58. They never found the young people Flores mentioned. Instead, they found the house fully engulfed in flames.
They determined it was too dangerous to go inside, partly because the house was abandoned and partly due to a sagging roof, according to Gilroy Assistant Fire Chief Dave Bozzo.
“There was risk of collapse,” Bozzo said. “There were heavy fire conditions, as well as it was known there was a basement in there, giving the potential for a weakened floor, where a firefighter might fall through the floor.”
The city fire crew arrived first and extinguished the fire from the outside while California Department of Forestry firefighters stood by. Since the building is just outside city limits (across the street is inside the boundary) and thus outside the Gilroy Fire Department’s jurisdiction, the city crew then turned the scene over to CDF to mop up and begin to investigate.
Based on a preliminary investigation, it appears the fire may have started near the kitchen, CDF Capt. Scott Palmer said. Unless investigators turn up something fishy, the cause will go into the books as “undetermined,” Palmer said, since the property owner told firefighters he wasn’t interested in pursuing the investigation further.
The house was owned by Las Animas Properties. Gilroy real estate broker Mark Sanchez, who represents the man who owns the company, declined to identify him.
“He was working on either a demolition permit or giving it to the fire department for training (a test burn),” Sanchez said.
The owner will probably demolish the house now, Palmer said.
The house was likely a regular stopping place for homeless people. According to Palmer, witnesses from South County Housing told firefighters they have seen various people going in and out of the abandoned house for some time.
