Fire Ravages Student Home on Bellomy Street

Flames from outlet destroys garage home to three students

Sophie MattsonTHE SANTA CLARAJanuary 22, 2014

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]hree Santa Clara students have been displaced after a fire that demolished their off-campus home on the night of Saturday, Jan. 17. A  fire investigator’s report will determine if it was caused by an electrical fire.

Junior Kieran Skelly, as well as seniors Adam Schellenberg and Chris DeWeese, lived in the converted garage of the off-campus house on Bellomy Street known as Chalet, until a fire started in an outlet at approximately 8 p.m, according to Skelly.

“It completely destroyed everything,” Skelly said. “There’s two rooms, a double in the front and a single in back and it started in the double that Chris and I have.”

No one was inside of the converted garage when the fire started, but several people were inside the main house, according to Skelly.

The fire did not damage the main house, which four people currently inhabit, but spread to a tree before it was extinguished. Nobody was injured in the fire.

Skelly was the first of his housemates to see the fire, which took firefighters roughly three hours to extinguish.

“I was coming back from Safeway and you could see the black smoke coming out of the rafters at about 8:30 p.m,” he said. “It was of my worst fears realized, I was in shock. It was how you’d expect to feel when you see your stuff burning up.”

Skelly said he has been living in other people’s homes until he finds a place to live for the remainder of the academic year, and that he might move into on-campus housing.

Schellenberg, Skelly and DeWeese have retained a lawyer and filed insurance claims.Skelly said his losses from the fire are estimated at a total of $15,000.

People had previously lived in the same converted garage according to Skelly, but the landlord told him, Schellenberg and DeWeese not to live in the garage before they moved in.

“She sent us an addendum four days before we were supposed to move in on July 4 saying we weren’t allowed to live in the back house,” Skelly said.

The fire investigator’s report will be released today.

Contact Sophie Mattson at smattson@scu.edu or call (408) 554-4852.