REDWOOD CITY — The six-alarm blaze that raced through a 73-unit apartment complex last week appears to be an accident that started near a kitchen, possibly due to a pot left on a stove, a fire official said Tuesday.
Investigators have narrowed the starting point of the fire to the kitchen area in a unit on the fourth floor of the building at 926 Woodside Road, said Redwood City Fire Marshal Jim Palisi. There were no indications the flames, which left over 70 people without a home Thursday, were anything but an accident, he said.
It will be difficult to provide any more specific explanation of the fire because the area where it started was so badly damaged. Though Palisi said an unwatched pot “is a very good possibility,” for the culprit.
Four people were injured in the early morning flames, which authorities said would have been slowed by a fire sprinkler system. However, because the Terrace Apartments were built in 1963, they were not subject to 1989 state rules requiring sprinklers in multi-unit buildings.
Fire officials firmly agree sprinklers save lives, but they are not required in all older apartment buildings, in part, due to resistance from landlords, who would bear the cost of retrofitting, an investigation by this newspaper found.
A 1960s-era building similar to the Terrace Apartments burned in July in Redwood City, killing one man and sending 18 residents to the hospital. It was not equipped with fire sprinklers.