All belongings lost, nothing insured
Gilroy – Everything was lost. When Angel Galvan and Rufino Salinas came home at 2am Monday, Oct. 9 to the one-story house they rented at 4425 Hecker Pass Highway, they found a smoldering shell of their former home. Days later, it still smells of soot and ash. Nothing was insured.
It had to be the bar next door, Galvan thought: La Cantinita, co-owned by Olivia Lara and her son. But as they pulled up to the house late from seeing friends in Hollister, they saw their charred belongings, scattered haphazardly across the yard. A mattress, burnt down to the bedsprings, lay alongside scorched pairs of jeans, a melted DVD player, and a handful of CDs.
The call went out to the California Department of Forestry at 10:45pm Sunday, said Chief Dale Foster. Five units quelled the blaze. Galvan, 28, said firefighters told him a short-circuit caused it, but CDF officials could not be reached by press time to confirm.
In the morning, when Lara pulled up to the bar, she thought a pipe had broken: An inch of water flooded the road.
“The only clothes they saved,” she said, “are the clothes they were wearing.”
Galvan and Salinas, 29, are currently staying with friends in Gilroy.
