Crime & Safety

Arson Suspected in Dog-Rescue Fire

Blaze causes $275K in damages to Los Gatos home.

Santa Clara County Fire investigators are saying a fire that broke out the evening of Oct. 28 at a single-story home located at 194 Vista Del Monte is arson and that damages to the property are estimated at nearly $300,000.

The fire broke out shortly after 11 p.m. The home's next-door neighbor called 911 when he smelled burnt plastic as he was walking his dog outside and realized nobody was home, said Dennis Johnsen, Santa Clara County Fire Department's Arson Unit chief.

"He saw the windows in the front of the house were black from the smoke inside and he went up and touched the windows on the door and they were really hot," Johnsen said.

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The property suffered about $75,000 in fire damage, more than $100,000 in smoke and soot damage and another $100,000 in content losses, Johnsen added. "They're going to have to rip out probably the majority of all the wall board and redo everything inside. It was all ruined from all the smoke," he noted.

The fire is believed to have started in one of the bedrooms and was purposely set by an arsonist, he said. "It's definitely arson. There was nobody home. The house was locked and someone got there and set it up."

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The homeowner, identified as Jil Britt, has three children, one in college and two ages 16 and 11. They were not home at the time of the fire, he said.

Their small dog, however, was left in a crate inside the home and nearly died during the blaze, Johnsen added.

Firefighters found the animal in a kennel in the family room and, after they put the fire out and could barely see from the smoke, they found it in the corner, took it outside and used an oxygen mask to help it breathe due to respiratory complications caused by smoke and carbon-monoxide inhalation.

The normal treatment for smoke inhalation in humans is to immerse them in a lot of oxygen and they did the same thing for the animal, he said. "It helped to disperse the carbon monoxide in the dog's blood and helped flush everything out. It takes a long time, but it worked," he said.

The male dog, about 4 years old, is said to have recovered and survived, he added. At the veterinary hospital, the dog was put in an oxygen tent receiving oxygen 24 hours a day. "As far as I know the dog was doing fine," he said.

Johnsen said he wasn't aware of arson fires in the Vista Del Monte neighborhood, but reported many accidental fires do happen in town just like they do in other communities.

"There are a lot different motives why people do this," Johnsen said of the arsonist, but he stressed the incident was not random.

A total of 24 firefighters responded to the incident helping contain it to the single residence and working well into early Saturday morning to clean it up, Johnsen said.

If anyone has information or may have seen something suspicious in the area the evening of the fire, they are urged to call the Santa Clara County Fire Department's anonymous hotline at 1-888-341-4401.


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