GILROY
– If a fire is big enough to warrant a call to the fire
department, it’s too big for a garden hose, city fire officials
say.
When flames threatened new homes on Village Place Friday,
residents and neighbors set to work wetting wooden fences with
garden hoses.
GILROY – If a fire is big enough to warrant a call to the fire department, it’s too big for a garden hose, city fire officials say.
When flames threatened new homes on Village Place Friday, residents and neighbors set to work wetting wooden fences with garden hoses.
In hindsight, Gilroy Fire Department Acting Division Chief Ed Bozzo said, the actions of Village Place residents like Greg Leach, David Sepulveda and Ron Colman were “probably unsafe.” Instead, Bozzo said, people should evacuate a home that is burning or threatened by fire and leave the firefighting to trained professionals.
“I know people mean well and everything, but we would hate to see them put themselves in harm’s way,” Bozzo said.
He pointed out Sepulveda’s comment that the flames became so hot he and Leach had to retreat.
“They don’t have the proper protective clothing like we do, and they cannot put out enough water to stop a fire of that magnitude,” Bozzo said.
Even watering grass or, in the case of Village Place, wooden fences to prevent them from igniting does little good, Bozzo said. The radiant heat from a large blaze can dry out whatever water a hose added before the actual flames even get there.
“A garden hose is going to do little, if anything at all, … other than maybe putting out embers or something that land on their roof or … patio. … To try and stop an oncoming fire with a garden hose – I think people have to realize that we’re using large diameter hoses, and we still have trouble.”
At a different fire three days before, on Aug. 3, a manager of Trevis Berry Transportation Inc. used a garden hose in a futile attempt to extinguish a blaze that engulfed piles of cardboard boxes and wooden pallets in the company’s shipping yard. A witness who tried to help the manager said they soon were forced to retreat.
Bozzo said this, too, was unsafe and ineffective.
The best way citizens can protect their homes of businesses from fire, he said, is by clearing vegetation in a 30-foot radius from a building.
