A wood-burning stove sparked a two-alarm fire in the attic of a
Gilroy home Monday night. The blaze was quickly contained, sparing
the house from being red-tagged by city inspectors. But a friend of
the victims said he was frustrated by the department’s response,
and opted to fight the fire himself.
Gilroy – A wood-burning stove sparked a two-alarm fire in the attic of a Gilroy home Monday night. The blaze was quickly contained, sparing the house from being red-tagged by city inspectors. But a friend of the victims said he was frustrated by the department’s response, and opted to fight the fire himself.
Rose Gelvin, who was house-sitting for her brother Jim Johnson, noticed sparks issuing from the flue about 8:30pm Monday night. Gelvin, her son Richard, 23, and daughter Denise, 19, escaped uninjured. Her husband, Richard Gelvin, was working in Madera when the fire erupted. When Rose Gelvin called him, he in turn phoned a friend, Fernando Aguirre, who rushed to the house at 82 W. Las Animas Ave.
Three engines and a rescue unit beat him to the scene. But as firefighters sized up the situation outside, Aguirre grew impatient, and took matters into his own hands. Grabbing a garden hose, he ran to the backyard, and turned water onto the flames.
“It’s my friend’s house, and I don’t want it to burn down,” Aguirre said.
Fire chief Dale Foster said firefighters asked Aguirre to move aside, before turning their hoses onto the blaze.
“They were concerned about his personal safety, and also about him getting in our way,” Foster said. “He was asked to move in an appropriate, pleasant, calm way, but he was upset about it.”
Rose Gelvin has emphasized that she was pleased by the firefighters’ work, and feels they did everything necessary to snuff the fire. Foster agrees.
“Every indication I have is that we handled the fire appropriately, and treated the customer appropriately,” he said.
Fire damage was limited to the attic, said Foster, and didn’t spread to other homes. However, firefighters asked the family to spend the night elsewhere, before a city inspector could gauge the damage. Firefighters used hall runners and tarps to minimize the effect of soot and smoke.
Foster said that wood-burning stoves aren’t a common cause of fires, but need to be installed and maintained properly to stay safe.
In this case, he said, “there was obviously some kind of mechanical problem in the flue system, that allowed the fire to go beyond the flue.”
