Fire investigators deemed a garage fire at a family’s Santa Ana home late Wednesday, April 28 an accident, but have not determined its exact cause after analyzing burn patterns, interviewing neighbors and reviewing camera footage showing someone running from the property just as the flames started.
Shortly after 11 p.m. Juan Barajas and his wife were in the living room of his house in the 1400 block of West Borchard Avenue when he saw fire outside. The garage was ablaze.
“I just saw a big splash of orange,” Barajas told a news photographer. “We just started getting the kids, I got four kids and we started taking them out (of the house) and that’s when we called 911.”
Smoke was creeping into the rooms of the home, Barajas said, but everyone was able to make it outside safely. Once outside, he tried to put the flames in the garage out with a hose.
Firefighters arrived and were able to extinguish the fire in about 12 minutes, said Orange County Fire Authority Battalion Chief Mike Summers. They also helped the family find their dog, who was apparently hiding in the back part of the property.
The fire started inside the garage, which was closed at the time, and did not spread to the rest of the home, OCFA Capt. Sean Doran said. Fire investigators believe it was sparked by a malfunction in one of several electrical devices near the blaze’s point of origin
Barajas said it looked like someone intentionally set the blaze.
“I was checking my cameras and we noticed someone running out of the property,” he said.
In the home’s camera footage shared with reporters, a hooded figure is visible leaving the home through an opening in the gate and running off on the sidewalk. However, “the individual in that video was not involved in the fire,” Doran said. That conclusion was based on analysis of the recording, evidence collected at the scene and interviews with witnesses.
The identity of the person in the video remained unclear Thursday evening.
