SAN MARTIN
– A teen-ager escaped her burning San Martin home Friday
afternoon, but two of the family’s three kittens perished in the
blaze.
Kimberly Lynch and her two daughters, Tasha Martinez, 19, and
Katherine Martinez, 11, have lived in the New Avenue house for 10
years. The older daughter was the only one home when the fire broke
out. She immediately dialed 9-1-1 and then fled the building.
SAN MARTIN – A teen-ager escaped her burning San Martin home Friday afternoon, but two of the family’s three kittens perished in the blaze.
Kimberly Lynch and her two daughters, Tasha Martinez, 19, and Katherine Martinez, 11, have lived in the New Avenue house for 10 years. The older daughter was the only one home when the fire broke out. She immediately dialed 9-1-1 and then fled the building.
In the end, the back half of the 3,000-square-foot home was destroyed – about $750,000 in damage, according to Capt. Mike Mathiesen of the California Department of Forestry South County Fire District.
After the fire, family members stood by as firefighters carried books, furniture and anything else they could salvage into the driveway. For now, the family is staying with Lynch’s mother in Gilroy.
“They lost everything, but they’re doing OK,” Scott Lynch, Kimberly’s brother and the owner of Bob Lynch Ford-Lincoln-Mercury in Gilroy, said this morning. “They’re trying to put things back together.”
The three kittens were staying in the laundry room, Scott Lynch said. A firefighter removed one of them from the house, but the other two died, Mathiesen said.
The cause of fire was still unknown as of press time, according to CDF officials. Family members said they thought it started on the house’s back deck, but fire investigators had not arrived at a specific point of origin as of press time.
“We narrowed it down of the northwest portion of the building, in the back somewhere,” Mathiesen said this morning.
Strong, 20-mph winds and low, 23-percent humidity made for dangerous firefighting conditions when CDF and Gilroy fire crews arrived at the house Friday. They contained the blaze in a little more than an hour.
The wind, coming from the north, was blowing burning embers off the house, Mathiesen said, and firefighters were preparing to fight subsequent blazes in the surrounding grass or in houses to the south.
The fire engulfed the back of the house, and firefighters began with an aggressive attack of the interior. The flames quickly spread through the attic, however, resulting in a partial roof collapse and forcing firefighters to back out of the burning structure.
Mathiesen said he was worried the fire would spread to the rest of the house because the gutter surrounding the roof was filled with dry leaves, but firefighters were able to contain the blaze before it spread any further.
This article was assisted by writer Peter Crowley.
