By Daily Press staff — John F. Muller
MONTANA AVE. — Investigators are trying to determine the cause of a three-alarm apartment fire that caused an estimated $20,000 to $30,000 in damages Tuesday morning.
Firefighters were called to the scene of a ground-floor blaze at 521 Montana Ave. around 10:45 a.m. by two of the building’s tenants. Once there, three engine companies contained the fire in the master bedroom of the first-floor apartment, where the fire apparently started in a closet, according to lead investigator Joe Paneno.
No one was injured in the blaze. The precise cause of the fire remains unclear as a group of factors made it difficult to narrow down. A police and fire department task force will continue to probe the fire’s origin.
“We need some verification on some activities that were going on within the unit,” said Paneno. “People coming and going, unrestricted access... they did mention they had some electrical types of situations that could be a cause that we’d have to eliminate.”
Two paramedic squads and a truck rescue team were also on the scene, along with an extra engine company.
The fire did heavy smoke and heat damage to the first-floor apartment, as well as damage to the two apartments directly above it. The fire burned on ordinary combustibles, but grew extremely hot and smoky, Paneno said.
“It really worked our people,” he said. “Whenever you have any type of fire that produces that kind of heat and smoke... it’s a difficult task for our firefighters because they’re dealing with all those unknowns — visibility, working with axes, actually trying to determine the area of origin — so these are the types of fires (where) we get a lot of firefighters injured because of the hindering factors involved.”
The team cleared the scene around 3 p.m., Paneno said.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on July 14, 2004. Read the original PDF.