4-Alarm Blaze Destroys San Jose Storage Units

 
On Saturday, August 27, at a few minutes past 9:00 P.M., San Jose Fire received calls for smoke coming from a unit in a very large complex of Public Storage buildings. The location was 925 Felipe Avenue at the dead end off Olinder Court and Story Road. This location is almost underneath the bridges at the junction of Highway 101 and Interstates 280/680.
 
San Jose dispatched a full first alarm at 9:06 P.M., and initial attacking units reported a car fire within a unit in the middle of a large, L-shaped building.
   
The fire soon spread to adjacent units and a second alarm was requested. Master streams were soon put into service and a third alarm was requested. At 10:31 P.M. Fire Associates was paged and Don Gilbert and John Whiteside responded with Fire Support Unit 2. They were met on-scene by Mike Garcia. While FSU-2 was enroute, the fire escalated to a fourth alarm with a Mutual Aid structure response from Santa Clara County, Milpitas, and Santa Clara City fire departments.
 
However, the en route fourth alarm rigs were cancelled when the smoke coming from the other leg of the L-shaped building was found to be only drift smoke from the main fire. A great effort contained the fire damage to several units centered on the initial fire site.
   
Donuts, water, Gatorade, Clif bars and coffee, along with bench seating were very much appreciated by the exhausted fire fighters. FSU-2 was released at 3:05 A.M. and returned to quarters. A few fire crews remained on scene through the next day to completely extinguish the fire.
   
-- Report. Submitted by John Whitesite