Hollister firefighters responded to a house fire shortly after 4:30 p.m. Monday, containing the blaze to the granny unit portion of that home near Sally and Olive streets where nobody was injured in the incident.
That, however, was just the first in a series of serious emergency calls for the recently depleted fire department, Fire Chief Bob Martin Del Campo said at the scene of the blaze.
Those subsequent calls included a major-injury vehicle accident involving a semi-truck and Honda car at Highway 156 and Fairview Road, resulting in one resident being transported by Calstar to Natividad Medical Center in Salinas.
Another call was a report of a recreational vehicle into a garage portion of a structure around the 900 block of Fourth Street near Camacho Tires, the chief said. Responders also went to a medical aid call in the San Juan Canyon area, he said, along with another medical aid in Hollister.
With the fire, crews had it out by 4:47 p.m., Del Campo said at the scene of the Sally Street incident. It was likely a complete loss for the granny unit where three young adults lived. Those residents apparently informed authorities they could move into the other portion of the home where family members live, the chief said.
Del Campo told the Free Lance that investigators found the point of origin on one side toward the back end of the granny unit, but the cause remained unclear. He said it would take fire insurance investigators some time to determine an official cause.
At the outset of the response flurry, though, the chief had to scramble in search of firefighters due to recent cuts. The Hollister Fire Department, which covers the entire county, lost 12 of 41 firefighters on July 8 with the end of a $2.2 million federal grant awarded in 2014.
The chief said he did a “call out” for crews and that two off-duty firefighter employees responded along with two of the recently laid-off, full-time employees who are now reserves. He said fire departments usually want to staff each engine with three firefighters for safety purposes, but he could only have two on each because of lacking personnel.
