GILROY
Fire destroyed a two-story, five-bedroom house on Holsclaw Road just north of Gilman Road in east Gilroy this afternoon when a kitchen fire got out of hand.
The blaze started at 2:08 p.m. and quickly spread through the entire house, engulfing it fully within 10 minutes, firefighters and resident Anthony Baham said.
“The house was drier than a popcorn fart,” Baham said. “It went up in about four minutes.”
Baham’s mother, Lynn, was downstairs making tortillas on an oiled pan about 2 p.m., Baham said. She went upstairs to ask Baham if he wanted something to eat, and chatted with him for several minutes before one of them noticed the smell of smoke. When they went downstairs, the hood of the stove was on fire and they immediately evacuated. They were unable to take any possessions with them.
Lynn Henson had lived in Gilroy for years, but Anthony Baham just moved into town from Washington with his son, who was at Ascencion Solorsano Middle School at the time of the fire, Baham said. The Bahams rented the house, which was an older structure, and said they did not know who the owners were.
“It was an awesome house,” Anthony Baham said. “It had an old feel and it was out of town.”
Nobody was injured in the blaze, but the family’s dog, Mercedes, has not been located and is feared to be inside, Baham said. Nine engines from the Gilroy Fire Department, Santa Clara County Fire Department and CalFire responded to the three-alarm blaze, but were only able to contain it by the time they arrived. The roof fell in about 3:15 p.m.
Dark smoke from the fire, which was thick and sustained, rose northward above Gilroy into the otherwise clear sky through the middle of the afternoon.
