Crime & Safety

Roofing Crew Mishap Sparked Apple Growers Fire

Fire officials release cause Friday, rule blaze an accident.

A roofing crew accidentally sparked the fire that destroyed a Watsonville cold storage facility last month, fire officials reported Friday.

”It was an accidental fire. It was caused by activities related to roofing work,” Watsonville Fire Investigator Rob Ryan said.

caught fire April 20 and burned for three days. The blaze gutted the massive warehouse facility on West Beach Street and destroyed Martinelli’s apple cider products worth millions of dollars worth that had been stored there.

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Before the fire started, a roofing crew had done repair work on the back west corner of the building. The three-day job ended midday Wednesday, April 20. Apple Growers employees noticed smoke in that part of the building around 3:30 p.m. that day.

Ryan said it’s difficult to determine how long the fire had been smoldering inside the walls of the building—which were made of concrete, packed with redwood mulch and covered with cork to insulate the facility, built in 1928.

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When the crew reroofed, they used a propane tank with a hose connected with a torch on the end. The torch heated tar on the backside of the roofing tiles to lay over the old roof, according to Ryan.

The flame got into the building. The fire ignited through two holes on the back wall of the building about six inches square.

“It smoldered and it was just under an area where it started to burn,” Ryan said. “For some reason, everything lined up.”

Though early in the probe, the investigation took several weeks, because they had to eliminate all other causes, Ryan explained.


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