Extra

Apartment Fire Still Smouldering

By Steven Finacom
Saturday November 19, 2011 - 11:45:00 AM
Andy Liu
Andy Liu
Andy Liu
Andy Liu
Steven Finacom
Steven Finacom
Steven Finacom
Steven Finacom
Steven Finacom

The fire that started in the Sequoia Apartments at Haste and Telegraph on the evening of Friday, November 18, was still burning the next morning. Berkeley Fire Department crews continued to pour water into the mixed-use structure, a historic apartment building that contains 39 units and restaurants popular with the campus crowd, including Café Intermezzo and Raleigh’s pub. The building has four floors—including the commercial level—along Telegraph and five levels on Haste.

A column of smoke was visible throughout Berkeley this morning above the severely damaged building. Along Telegraph the top floor apartments and some on the third floor below appeared gutted. The sky and charred lathe and plaster walls were visible through several of the fourth floor windows. Along Haste the damage extended down to the second floor, which was one of the first portions of the building visibly burning last night. Some of the aluminum window frames hung blackened and distorted above the street. 

Last night, a Cal student who said she lived in the building and was standing on Haste Street watching the fire said that residents had smelled smoke in the evening The rumor among residents was that there might be an electrical fire in the walls. The flames broke out before 9:00 pm. 

Streets were blocked in all directions, including Haste between Bowditch and Dana, and Telegraph from Channing south to Blake. Several fire engines remained, and visibly exhausted fire fighters walked about. 

Water poured from two ladder trucks on Haste Street into the gaping roof. A man who said he was with a company that stabilized damaged buildings said that fire personnel were not entering the building until the structural condition could be assessed, and efforts to completely extinguish the fire, now burning in the basement, might last until Sunday or Monday. 

He said that if the structure could be saved, the first step would be to erect temporary bracing along the street walls to secure them in place, then start to stabilize interior damage. 

As spectators watched along the quiet streets a steady pillar of grey smoke rose above the building into a blue, sunny, sky. Smoke occasionally puffed out of the windows. Telegraph and Haste were littered with charred debris in a flood of water that poured out the doors of the restaurants and down Haste Street, flowing blocks away. 

The Sequoia Apartments was built in 1916 and “is one of Southside’s most important historic structures” according to preservationist and historian John English, who has lived two blocks away since the 1960s. The distinctive exterior features a cream colored brick, decorated with patterned inserts of colored brick and tile. 

Among the businesses it once contained were Mario’s La Fiesta Restaurant (which relocated further up Haste Street some years ago, and is now a restaurant called Manny’s), and the Studio Guild theater, associated with famed movie critic Pauline Kael. 

The Daily Californian has posted a report with numerous interviews with student residents of the building.