Apartment building destroyed in fire

CONSTRUCTION SITE BLAZE KEPT FROM SPREADING; NO ONE HURT

By Leslie Griffy
Mercury News

Photo by Nhat V. Meyer / Mercury News
Mercury News

A four-story luxury apartment house being built in Santa Clara caught fire Tuesday, spewing embers over a dense residential area and stirring memories of the 2002 construction-site fire at Santana Row that set a nearby apartment complex ablaze.

While no other structures caught fire -- including four on the same lot also under construction -- flames four stories high grabbed the attention of passersby and neighbors, who watched crews fight the fire for more than two hours.

Emergency workers combed the neighborhood near Moreland and Fitzpatrick ways, searching for embers on rooftops and other combustible surfaces. Chunks of burned wood, the size of small pieces of charcoal, crunched under foot as firefighters walked on Moreland. The charred pieces were scattered as far as a block from the blaze.

It's unclear what sparked the fire, Santa Clara Fire spokesman Dave Parker said, but crews are investigating. The fire was contained at 7:23 p.m., with firefighters remaining on the scene to take care of hot spots.

Construction crews working on the fifth floor of a nearby building saw flames in a corner of the roof, framer Gabriel Ventura said.

``Our first instinct was to call 911 and give them our location,'' he said. ``Then we ran.''

The workers scrambled down a fire escape they had built not long before, he said. No one appears to have been injured in the blaze, officials said.

Santa Clara fire crews arrived at 1:57 p.m., three or four minutes after the blaze was first reported, Parker said. They quickly trained four extension-ladder hoses on the buildings adjacent to the construction site, Parker said, a lesson emergency crews learned in the wake of the Santana Row fire in 2002.

The shopping center also was under construction when the 11-alarm blaze erupted. Embers from the fire, lofted over Interstate 280, landed on a nearby apartment building, destroying 34 units and displacing 70 people.

The blaze, San Jose's biggest, spurred officials to update Santa Clara County's ``mutual aid'' plan, a bid to speed firefighters' deployment to major fires. San Jose fire officials also devised a way for dispatchers to instantly know which cities to call for help and how many crews each city can commit.

``It's still fresh in our minds,'' Parker said, noting that some of the firefighters at Tuesday's blaze probably helped fight the Santana Row fire.

He also credited that experience with the decision to quickly call for backup. By 2:12 p.m., 15 minutes after firefighters first arrived, they upgraded the blaze to five alarms and asked for help. Crews from San Jose, Santa Clara County, Sunnyvale, Palo Alto and Milpitas arrived to help fight the fire.

The fire destroyed the structure, one of five that make up a 430-unit condo-and-apartment project owned by Prometheus Real Estate Group. The structure was surrounded by scaffolding, but it was not yet wrapped in drywall or fire-proofing material. By 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, only the skeleton of the lower floors remained. Wood planks could be seen through the smoke, falling to the ground.

The Prometheus Web site lists the project as condominiums, but a representative at Prometheus' San Mateo office said the structure that burned was to be rental units, scheduled to begin leasing in March.

The project's Web site boasts of two of the tallest buildings in the immediate area, offering ``spectacular views of the Santa Clara and San Jose areas.''

One of those buildings, a seven-story structure only feet away from the one that caught fire, was saved, Parker said, after crews had trained their hoses on it. A construction worker said the taller building had recently been wrapped with yellow fire-proofing.

``It's amazing,'' Parker said. ``Everything in there is combustible.''

Homeowners across the street, however, didn't seem too worried. They gathered to take pictures and watch fire crews at work.

``There were really big flames,'' Ville Nieminen, who lives nearby, said while checking out the fire. ``But it doesn't seem like it will spread.''

Daniel Ullman said he spotted the flames as he drove to the nearby Rivermark shopping center and decided to take pictures.

``You see stuff like this on TV,'' he said. ``I just never thought I'd ever see anything like it in real life.''