When the fire broke out at his office building at 2 a.m. on Nov. 14, 2012, Dr. Martin Bress knew everything was lost.
“It took a major hit,” he said, “100 percent loss.”
By early January of this year, Sunnyslope Medical Center Building B, at 930 Sunnyslope Road, had been completely rebuilt.
“We’re back at full blast now,” Bress said in a recent interview.
The building, which he shares with dentist Dr. Mark Stephens, had completely burned to the ground except for the foundation, he said. He estimates there was more than $1 million in damage that resulted from the fire, after the insurance company did an investigation.
“It was arson,” he said.
He said the man who admitted to the arson was caught by Hollister police in February of last year at the Gibson Station complex.
“We had a list of 900 separate line items we needed,” he said. “It’s still ongoing.”
The same day the fire destroyed the building, Bress and his staff moved into surgeon Dr. Ghulam Moheyuddin’s office nearby.
“If it wasn’t for that, I’d probably be in a tent in the street,” he said.
He said Dr. Moheyuddin and his staff were “great.”
“We were in there within a few days,” he said.
Bress, who sees 2,500 patients, is a primary and cardiovascular physician. He said because of space issues, he had to suspend treadmill tests for heart patients at the office. Additionally, the office had to limit what kind of laboratory tests it could complete because of space limitations.
“Our patients really stuck with us,” he said. “They found their way to where we were.”
He said his staff “dug right in” and said it was a “team effort.”
He said the office looks almost exactly the same as the old office – with a few changes.
“We set it up that if we wanted to do computerized records, we can do that,” he said.
Other than records, the few noticeable differences was the lack of pictures and degrees on the walls of the building.
He said after the fire destroyed his medical degrees, his alma mater Boston University felt so bad for him that it mailed him a copy of his degrees for free.
The office was rebuilt by local Del Curto Brothers Construction, Inc. They started in July and finished in early January, he said.
“This was really built by Hollister people,” he said.
He said he helped craft the plans for the building in 1985. Luckily, the original architect still had saved the architectural plans for the old building.
He said it was nice to share space with Dr. Moheyuddin, whom he shared office space across town in the 1970s.
“It was like going back in time,” he said.
He really appreciated the surgeon’s hospitality, he said.
“I asked Dr. Moheyuddin, ‘In your religion, do they have saints? If so, you have enough votes to get elected,’” he said.
Dr. Moheyuddin is originally from Pakistan and is a Muslim.
Dr. Moheyuddin, in an interview, said on the same day the fire happened, he told Dr. Bress not to worry and that his office was open to him.
“Just walk in!” he recalled telling Bress. “We were happy to help him. I never heard one complaint either from my staff or his staff.”
He said the expression from Bress about him being a saint was appropriate because “Moyehuddin” is actually the name of a famous saint.
“It was really great how nice they were to us,” Bress said.
Since the indoor construction is complete, the last task that remains is landscaping.
“We thought about just painting the dirt green,” he joked.
Pattie Galaz, who is a medical assistant, said it was “really amazing how it all worked out.”
She said that the same day as the fire, they had moved into Dr. Moheyuddin’s space and even saw a patient the same day.
“It was kind of bittersweet moving back in,” she said. “It was like coming home.”
