Jan. 08--MODESTO -- The owner says the house on Seattle Street in Modesto is a complete loss and will have to be torn down. The tenants who lived there are currently being sheltered at a nearby hotel by the Red Cross.
It was a fire hot enough to fuse the refrigerator's door shut, and to melt the bottles inside. Although they tried, it was a fire so hot that the tenants were never going to be able to stop it with a garden hose.
By that time, they were faced with a choice.
"His daughter, a baby... it was either the dog or the baby. He made the correct choice," said Richard Cano, the home's owner.
Cano says the dog was overcome by the fire and died.
Cano grew up in the Modesto home. He says it breaks his heart to see it destroyed. We asked him about the four-year-old, playing with matches in a bed early Sunday morning- the suspected source of the fire.
"I did not know that. That's terrible. if that's what happened, my question would be 'where were the parents?'" Cano said.
FOX40 asked firefighters with the Modesto Fire Department where a child would have gotten the matches. They told us that matches were every where, throughout the home. Now almost all you can find inside the 900 square foot house is a sooty, water-soaked ceiling, collapsed during the fire.
Still, for Cano the bottom line is this: no one was hurt.
"It's traumatic for both sides. This is something that no body wishes for. Accidents are accidents," Cano said.
The Modesto Fire Department agrees. They are calling the destructive blaze an accident as well. They 4-year-old boy who is suspected to have started it will no face charges.
Copyright 2012 - KTXL-TV, Sacramento, Calif.
