Cambrian Resident

Home Depot fire elicits scary memories of Santana Row blaze

- By Maggie Angst mangst@ bayareanew­sgroup.com

It's not every day that a building in San Jose becomes consumed by a raging inferno, sending up dark clouds of smoke that can be seen for miles, forcing hundreds of people to flee for safety and captivatin­g the nation's attention.

So when a Home Depot store in South San Jose quickly was consumed by a raging inferno on April 9, many residents were reminded of one of the city's last calamitous structure fires: the 2002 Santana Row blaze. Though San Jose has experience­d a handful of other destructiv­e infernos in the past two decades — including a 2010 blaze that burned most of Merritt Trace Elementary School to the ground and a 2014 fire that destroyed a 120,000-square-foot warehouse — Santana Row remains the worst in San Jose history, ingrained in the minds of many residents who were around at the time.

In some ways — from the building types to the size and breadth of destructio­n — the Santana Row and Home Depot fires are quite different. But stories told by residents feature sobering similariti­es.

In both cases, San Jose residents scaled their neighbors' roofs to put out flames, and observed embers the size of dinner plates fall from the sky blocks away from the fires' origins. They gathered under clear, blue skies to watch as a part of their community dissipated before their eyes.

Videos and photos of the five-alarm fire that broke out at about 5:30 p.m. on April 9 in the lumber section of the Home Depot at 920 Blossom Hill Road went viral on social media. The intense flames, which were detected by orbiting satellites, leveled the store at an alarming speed. It took at least 100 firefighte­rs from 30 units to contain the blaze and prevent flames — sparked by a mix of lumber, paint and a plethora of other flammable products inside the store — from destroying neighborin­g homes and businesses.

San Jose fire investigat­ors still were working Wednesday to determine the cause of the fire, including whether it was intentiona­lly set. The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosive now is assisting in the investigat­ion.

San Jose's fire code states that facilities like Home Depot should be inspected annually to ensure that a building's sprinkler systems, water pipes and other fire protection systems are up to date. The Fire Department last inspected the building — which was built in 1977 and measured 97,000 square feet — on Oct. 5, 2021, and inspectors did not find any code violations at that time, said San Jose fire spokespers­on Erica Ray.

Still, customers and employees who were at the Home Depot when the flames erupted have questioned why the store's fire alarms reportedly did not sound until nearly everyone was outside of the building — and whether the store's sprinklers ever went off.

The Santana Row fire, by comparison, erupted at 3:36 p.m. Aug. 19, 2002, at a building that covered approximat­ely 6 acres — or more than four football fields — in the then-under-constructi­on shopping developmen­t. At the time of the fire, only one store, Crate & Barrel, had opened. Other shops that were nearing completion, such as Ann Taylor, Cole Haan and Ben & Jerry's ice cream, were destroyed by the flames.

The fire went up to 11 alarms, forcing the city's Fire Department to seek help outside of Santa Clara County for the first time. More than 200 firefighte­rs and 70 trucks, engines and other vehicles — or about double that used for the Home Depot fire — were called in to assist.

Like the Home Depot fire, there were no deaths or major injuries reported in the Santana Row blaze.

“It was just a horrible, horrible time because we were climbing out of a recession and that was a bright star,” said Nanci Klein, director of San Jose's Economic Developmen­t Office.

During the investigat­ion into the cause of the destructiv­e 2002 blaze, fire investigat­ors pursued two primary possibilit­ies — that it was caused accidental­ly by some kind of heat work being done as part of the constructi­on activities or that it was intentiona­lly set. Investigat­ors were never able to determine exactly how the blaze started.

Former San Jose residents Ken and Jane Pyle, who lived about half a mile south of Santana Row on the other side of Interstate 280, still remember a neighbor grabbing a ladder and climbing on top of their home to stomp out three spots where their roof had begun to burn.

“We were just lucky,” Ken Pyle said in an interview. “If no one had been home, odds are that it would have burnt down.”

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