Millions of dollars of paper came within about 100 feet of going
up in smoke when a string of fires broke out along U.S. 101 and
charred vegetation on the east side and median of the freeway for
about a half-mile.
Gilroy – Millions of dollars of paper came within about 100 feet of going up in smoke when a string of fires broke out along U.S. 101 and charred vegetation on the east side and median of the freeway for about a half-mile.
“It just kept on traveling down the road with the wind pushing it,” said Ray Beadle, salesman at the Temple-Inland box plant, where a row of pine and eucalyptus trees ignited and flames stretched 50 feet into the air.
Gilroy Fire Department received a report at 3:36pm of three fires along the freeway’s northbound side between Monterey Road and Tenth Street exits and relayed the call to CalFire. More than 25 firefighters, seven fire engines and two water tenders wrestled the fire under control by fighting it from both sides of the fence that separated the highway from businesses.
California Highway Patrol and Gilroy Police directed traffic during the 15 minutes that the highway’s northbound side was closed. Two officers also fought the fire using a garden hose.
At risk during the fire were scores of six-foot rolls of paper stacked outside the box plant.
“If the wind had been blowing toward our inventory, we’d have had a problem,” Beadle said.
About three dozen employees, alerted of the blaze by an announcement over the company public address system, moved their cars out of the path of the fire and gawked at the burning row of trees.
In total, the blaze charred about five acres and sent one firefighter to Saint Louise Regional Hospital for heat exhaustion, Division Chief Phil King said. The firefighter was released in good condition, he said.
The cause of the fire is under investigation, King said.
“Not sure if something was sparking and shooting off (a vehicle),” he said. “Or there’s always of the chance of it being a suspicious fire.”
With low humidity, high temperatures and moderate winds the fire could have grown much larger and even hopped across the highway, King said.
“We got a little bit lucky there,” he said.
