Santa Clara County fire crews were called into action early Christmas Day to battle a significant blaze in Los Altos. According to the Santa Clara County Fire Department, the three-alarm fire ignited at a sizable commercial building on the notable stretch of El Camino Real, bounded by North San Antonio Road and Sherwood Avenue, as ABC7 News reported. Motorists were urged to avoid the area, seeking alternative routes to skirt the disturbance.
The inferno unleashed its fury early on Christmas morning, with firefighters from neighboring cities Mountain View and Palo Alto converging for backup. Teams with hoses and trucks worked fervently to quell the aggressive flames, in detail shared by the county's fire department on X. Red and blue lights piercing through the dawn's quiet, the situation, though fraught with challenges, had not grown past containment's reach. Onlookers, their holiday morning disrupted, watched anxiously as smoke billowed and embers danced skyward.
A dispatch from the fire department on social media provided an update, describing the structure as a two-story, 20,000-plus square-foot building now engulfed with fire crews adopting a defensive strategy to fight the blaze. This move indicated the extent of the fire's aggression, wherein offensive efforts might prove futile, and safety necessitates maintaining a reactive perimeter. The fire, with its untamed appetite, was contained to the building of its birth, with no expected spread to neighboring structures, an assurance laid out by the department's update on X.
#ElCaminoIncident update: Fire is in a two-story 20,000+ sq. ft. commercial building. Fire companies have switched to a defensive attack. The fire is not expected to expand past the building of origin. pic.twitter.com/2qqptrSVnQ
— Santa Clara County Fire (@sccfiredept) December 25, 2023
Officials have yet to disclose the cause of the fire or estimate the cost of the damages. Still, as crews continue to manage the incident.
