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Separate fires struck Berkeley Wednesday, one doing over $1 million in damage to a 98-year-old home on College Avenue 

Deputy Fire Chief said all of the city’s firefighters and equipment were involved in fighting the flames at the home at 2726 College Ave., joined by the crew from Lawrence Berkeley Nation-al Laboratory. 

Fire departments from Oakland and Albany stood watch over the city until the fire was finally quelled. 

The battle continued from the time of the first report at 9:14 a.m. until well into the pre-dawn hours, Orth said. 

Orth put no dollar value on the second fire, which was reported five hours earlier, because the building involved had been slated for demolition starting Monday morning. 

The abandoned warehouse is located on the site of the planned new Berkeley Bowl in West Berkeley between Ashby and Heinz avenues north of Eighth Street. 

Firefighters got the call at 4:24 p.m., well after the blaze had taken hold. Five engines, two trucks and about 30 firefighters battled the warehouse fire, which was controlled at about 5 p.m., Orth said. 

College Avenue fire 

The second, and far costlier blaze, did heavy damage to a 98-year-old three-story College Avenue home. 

Firefighters received the first call at 9:14, and the blaze went to three alarms before firefighters finally got the upper hand. 

Owner Anne Whyte had gone to Oakland for dinner when she received a call that the spacious building had caught fire. 

“I almost didn’t go,” she said. “If I  

hadn’t, I might’ve been asleep inside when the fire broke out.” 

The stucco-sided home was in the final stages of a major remodeling effort, Whyte said. 

“The house had been heavily damaged in the Loma Prieta earthquake, and we rebuilt it really strong, so it was capable of handling a 9.5 earthquake,” she said. 

“Shirley Dean used to quip when she was Mayor that if there was an earthquake that shut down city hall, they’d exercise eminent domain and take the house for a new city hall,” Whyte said. 

The Whytes have owned the home for nearly a quarter-century. The building is divided into two apartments, one on each of the lower two floors, while the uppermost level was being used for storage. 

Tenants were due to arrive soon to take both of the lower floors. 

“If anyone has some wonderful housing, I have a marvelous professor of philosophy and her husband, who is a renowned authority on French art and their two children, a kindergartner and a fourth grader, who were due to leave Philadelphia for Berkeley today,” Whyte said. 

“They desperately need new housing,” she said. “I sent them an email last night, and I called them this morning.” 

Whyte was just completing extensive remodeling work, and it was one of the workers who called to tell her about the fire. “We were just finishing the walls,” she said. 

“I’d just paid $4,000 to replace the front windows,” she said. 

“I have invested 18 years in this house,” she said, her voice breaking. “My husband and I were married in the back yard,” which she said she looked forward to seeing her children enjoy in the years to come. 

While the house was largely empty at the time of the blaze, Whyte was using the third level to store personal possessions, including an upright piano and an antique English officer’s table she cherished. 

And though her insurance carrier didn’t pay off for the quake damage—the agent was later stripped of his license and his company assessed the largest fine in state history—Whyte said she has good insurance this time around. 

Surveying the damage late Thursday morning, Whyte was pleased that the wooden garden frames in the front yard had been spared. “At least I’ll still have my garden,” she said, managing a faint smile. 

Orth attributed the fire to accidental causes, withholding the specifics until the final examination had been completed. 

“When we arrived, the upper rear portion of the structure was fully involved,” he said. 

Firefighters had some difficulty finding their ways through the building, he said, and one sustained a twisted ankle when his foot broke through the fire-weakened floor. 

By the time the flames were out, both the second and third floors had sustained heavy damage, while the first floor had significant water damage as well as some damage from flames. 

“We were still chasing hot spots at 3 a.m.,” he said, and firefighters stayed on-scene through most of the night. 

Warehouse blaze  

The first fire, a two-alarm blaze, broke out about 4:30 p.m. in the vacant, corrugated steel-sided warehouse directly behind the Ashby Lofts, the new 55-unit affordable housing project nearing completion at 1001 Ashby Ave. 

The building, earmarked for demolition before construction commences on the new Berkeley Bowl, was heavily damaged. 

Crews were at work Thursday morning clearing out debris, and preparing the way for an earlier-than-planned demolition, said one worker at the site. 

Workers were surveying the damage at the site of the Ashby Avenue fire shortly before noon Thursday, preparing for the demolition of the metal-sided warehouse. 

Water from the firefighters’ efforts had formed a muddy swamp to the northeast of the shed, and a massive backhoe had already gathered up some of the twisted debris and was awaiting the final takedown. 

And while crews were paving the way for the leveling of one structure, a dozen feet to the south, crews were busily putting finishing touches on another—the Ashby Lofts. 

An Affordable Housing Associates project, the 55-unit project was designed by Kava Massih, the same West Berkeley architect who drafted the plans for the new Berkeley Bowl that will rise at the site of the scorched warehouse. 

The apartments feature live/work spaces, and the project has been promoted as a means of housing artists whose living spaces in West Berkeley have been falling prey to development pressures. 

“We didn’t set a value on the fire because the building was going to be demolished anyway,” said Orth.