Gilroy Fire Crew Arrives to Help In Watsonville Blaze

An engine from the Gilroy Fire Department’s has joined four other crews from Santa Clara County in a mutual aid effort to help fight a blaze that has consumed a cold storage facility in Watsonville, according to Gilroy fire Capt. Tim Price.

The call for assistance was coordinated through the state’s Office of Emergency Services, he said.

The warehouse fire burning in  will consume the building, fire officials said Thursday.

"The building's gone," Watsonville said around 9 a.m. Thursday. "This is a controlled burn-down. We're not trying to save the building."

The Santa Clara County strike team rolled in around 7 p.m. to take a 12-hour night shift doing fire management. Gilroy, Mountain View, Sunnyvale and Santa Clara County are collaborating on the five-engine team. 

Thursday evening, the fire continued to smolder through thousands of crates of apple cider. Small pops were bottles of juice exploding; big bangs were fire extinguishers blowing up.

Watsonville Fire Chief Mark Bisbee said fire command has designed a staffing plan through Monday, relying on fire agencies from a four-county area to take 12-hour shifts monitoring the devastating blaze. 

The fire is expected to burn for at least three more days, said Bisbee, sleep-deprived from managing the fire attack overnight.

While the state will reimburse fire agencies that provide aid in long-term fires, operations less than 24 hours are not reimbursed, Price said. However, it is common practice for agencies to help one another in large fires, including the possibility of future aid to Gilroy from Watsonville.

 Overnight, the flames churned through the cavernous structure at 850 W. Beach St., fed by the materials used to construct the historic building—redwood mulch encased in concrete and cork.

The 1928 building in Watsonville's industrial district was storing  300,000-400,000 cases—about $4 million worth—of Martinelli's apple cider and raw apples, according to John Martinelli, owner of S. Martinelli and Co. in Watsonville. Late Wednesday and again Thursday morning, a crew of Martinelli's employees jockeying forklifts moved hundreds of pallets of product from areas still untouched by the fire.

On Thursday morning, the number of fire engines assigned to the warehouse blaze had been halved to eight. Three ladder trucks also were at the scene, dousing the building with water to control how the fire burned through the building, Bisbee said.

The fire started in a storage room in the back corner of the massive concrete structure.

"I thought it would just be confined to the two little rooms back there," said Bob Kirkland, chief engineer and a 20-year employee at Apple Growers Ice & Cold Storage Co. "That's not the case."

Fire crews had tried to rein in the flames, but the fire took off around midnight and tore through the building toward the West Beach Street side. Bisbee said it peeled off the roof; the advancing flames forced firefighters to back off and change tactics.

"It marched last night," Bisbee said. "It took off."

The fire is consuming the redwood mulch packed between layers of concrete—a common cooling method for older cold storage facilities across the country—and the interior walls are covered in cork. Also, the building has a 3-foot gap between the ceiling and the roof, which has given the fire room to run, Bisbee said.

"It's amazing how often it erupts in flames," said Kirkland, still dressed in Wednesday's clothes and watching the fire quietly. "You'd think, by now, there couldn't be much left."

Cal Fire officials were working with Watsonville fire staff to coordinate the ongoing response, which will involve continued cooperation from fire agencies in Santa Cruz, Monterey and Santa Clara counties.

"It's a long-term incident," Cal Fire Battalion Chief Rob Sherman said.

Watsonville residents are advised to take precautions against the smoke, a thick, black haze that is billowing through town. Bisbee said they advise people who have problems with the smoke to stay indoors with the windows closed or get out of town for the weekend.

"This is going to go multiple days," Bisbee said.

But the long-term impact of the fire is not yet clear.

For Martinelli's, the company may fall shy of its cider needs in the fall, the time of year when product supplies naturally dwindle and harvest season approaches.

Insurance will cover the financial loss, "but we can't replace what's gone," Martinelli said. In addition to the flats of apple cider products, about 3,000 tons of apples were inside the storage facility when the fire broke out.

"Going into next fall, we're expecting to have some shortages," Martinelli said. Behind him, the hundreds of plastic, apple-shaped bottles of juice littered the ground and the fire smoldered in the background.

The company, which operates a bottling plant across from the destroyed cold storage, also will have to hunt for a new location to store its apples pre-crushing or its product post-production. Martinelli said they may look for warehouse space in Salinas and store apples in its facility.

"It's less than ideal," he said.

S. Martinelli and Co. opened in Watsonville in 1890 and began a symbiotic relationship with Apple Growers Ice & Cold Storage Co. when the facility opened in 1928.

"We certainly hope they rebuild," Martinelli said.