The rear wing of apartments at the Brookdale Inn and Spa burst into flames in the early evening Tuesday, Aug. 18, consuming 10 apartments and damaging 10 others in a blaze that drew more than 100 firefighters from around Santa Cruz County.
The call went out at 5:35 p.m., and emergency crews quickly closed Highway 9 in both directions as fire crews climbed the two-story building to battle the blaze in dry August conditions.
Firefighters contained the fire before it reached the famed Brookroom restaurant and the inn’s hotel rooms.
“They made a great save,” Cal Fire Battalion Chief Scott Jalbert said.
The cause is under investigation, but Boulder Creek fire Chief Kevin McClish said the blaze was “suspicious.”
“(Looking at) where the fire started and that the rate of speed through the first building was so fast,” McClish said, “something’s not quite right.”
The fire affected 79 apartments, roughly half of which were occupied. McClish said the county building department red-tagged all of the inn’s apartments Wednesday, Aug. 19, because electricity could not be restored, but the hotel rooms were not red-tagged.
The Red Cross is working with residents to arrange temporary housing.
Resident Steven White might have been one of the first people to see the fire when he stepped outside for a cigarette.
White said he saw smoke at the end of the second-story hallway and grabbed a fire extinguisher to try to douse the fire, to no avail.
“As soon as I saw the flames, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to put it out,” White said.
White said he kicked down one door and banged on other neighbors’ doors, yelling at them to get out. By the time he went back to his apartment to grab some of his belongings, he said, the fire had jumped across three apartments and into his, so he jumped over a railing to get away from the building.
Other residents scrambled to carry their cats to safety before evacuating.
Crews from Boulder Creek Fire Protection District were first on scene and were joined by crews from around the county.
Cal Fire air attack helicopters battling the nearby Lockheed Fire made drops from above as bystanders watched the blaze.
McClish said the rooms had smoke detectors, but many were disabled or had expired batteries in them.
The fire completely burned down a section of the apartments that had been boarded up after a similar blaze in November 2005.
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