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 by sniffing blackened support beams for clues.
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.
The 2-year-old Labrador retriever, who has been trained to detect traces of flammable liquids, 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.
Meanwhile, the principal tenant of the house, who did not give his name, said he was tired of having people around and asked a Dispatch 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 one was injured.
No damage estimate was immediately available.
According to Wood, the two-story dwelling is at least 150 years old – older than the Civil War. 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 Gilroy, Santa Clara County and San Jose focused on keeping it from spreading.
Two hours later, they had it down to smoldering embers.
