KSBY

Posted: Mar 10, 2010 7:37 PM
Updated: Mar 12, 2010 11:40 AM

As Timothy Daniels of Morro Bay surveyed what was left of his burned out garage Wednesday morning, his feeling reverted back to last night when he was in his garage for a while. He thinks he started the fire accidently. "Earlier, I had been out there smoking my tobacco pipe and I think I tapped out my pipe in the wrong can"

That can had wood in it, and smoldering remains from the pipe eventually got the wood hot enough to burn, at least according to what Mr. Daniels believes was the cause.

Fire officials from the Morro Bay fire department are investigating, but they are inclined to think that's entirely possible. Fire chief Mike Pond said, "we are continuing the investigation on that, however the area of origin is exactly the location he's talking about where he disposed of the pipe contents."

Mr Daniels said he and his wife were alerted to the fire by an unusual sound. "It was kind of a big poof explosion noise and by the time we looked out the window, the whole carport was throwing flames." In fact, there were some actual explosions occurring. Fire fighters had to contend with that while working the fire. "They were dealing with ammuntion that was in the garage. It sounded like machine gun fire there for a while, popping so rapidly," said Chief Pond.

While Mr. Daniels feels a bit of regret on his part for realizing that he's probably at fault for starting the fire, he says he's happy things didn't turn out worse. "If we had not been home, the house would have been half gone at least. As it was, it's just the garage and carport. We got all the vehicles away. Nothing of great significance lost."

Damage to the burned out garage structure was estimated around $80,000, while the contents in the garage lost in the fire were about $25,000 in losses.