Editorials

After a three-week investigation, it is still not known whether there was a smoke detector in the central Berkeley house that burned last month and took the lives of three people, Fire Chief Reginald Garcia said Wednesday. 

Also inconclusive was the investigation into whether the windows were capable of opening in the two bedrooms at the 2160 Martin Luther King Jr. Way residence where UC Berkeley senior Azalea Jusay, 21, and her parents, Francisco and Florita Jusay, both 46, died. 

The District Attorney has declined to pursue negligence charges against property owner Manuel Reburiano based on the investigation, Garcia said. 

There were conflicting statements given by the previous tenants and the surviving four students concerning the present of a smoke detector, Garcia said. 

“The previous tenants had a photograph that clearly showed the presence of a smoke detector on a dining room wall,” he said. “But, as we’ve indicated before, our investigators could not find any physical evidence (of a smoke detector.) But that doesn’t mean there was not one there.” 

He said that investigators sifted through every piece of debris in the area where a detector should have been.  

The owner of the house, a Daly City resident, told investigators that there was a smoke detector in place at the top of the staircase. 

Several witnesses to the fire, including neighbor Arash Azarkhish, who attempted a rescue, said that he didn’t hear the sounds of a smoke detector. 

Garcia said that though one window in Azalea Jusay’s room wasn’t capable of opening, there was a secondary, openable window through which she could have escaped.  

The single window in the elder Jusays’ room was also reported stuck shut, but when a crew arrived to board-up the windows after the fire, a worker tapped on the sill with a hammer and it opened. 

“It’s inconclusive whether or not the windows played a role,” Garcia said. 

The fire was officially determined to be accidental, Garcia said, explaining that it began at around 6:40 a.m. Sunday Aug. 20 when combustibles, believed to be a cardboard box filled with papers or clothing, ignited because they were placed on or near a floor furnace in the dining room. 

One woman was spared in the fire. Michelle Plesa, 21, escaped by jumping from a second story window at the front of the house after she was alerted to the fire by a passer-by.