Point Reyes Light- December 23, 1998

Fire destroys Bolinas vacation home

Fire destroyed a vacation home in Bolinas Monday morning, and the owner suspects it may have been inadvertently started by an intruder trying to ward off this week's cold spell.

"It's hard to say exactly what started the fire, but what is clear is that it started in the area of an electric wall heater," said Bolinas Fire Chief Kevin Hicks, who responded to the fire call at 8 a.m.

The fire was confined to the back portion of one of a three-building compound at 40 Horseshoe Hill Rd., Hicks said, noting that fire crews were able to extinguish it within 15 minutes.

No one appeared to be inside the structure when the fire broke out, and no one was injured, he said.

Nevertheless, the fire caused an estimated $80,000 to $100,000 worth of damage to a well-designed, "pretty nice place," which is now irreparable, he said.

"The back wall's out. The framing's there, but it's burned. The remaining walls and roof are intact, but the whole thing is basically gutted."

Owner Peter Calhoun of San Francisco, who with other family members uses the compound for vacations, told The Light on Tuesday that he suspects that an intruder may have accidentally caused the fire.

"Our family doesn't ever use the heaters. I don't know, but perhaps someone went in there and used one over the weekend," Calhoun said.

Someone broke into the building on or before last Thursday and could have reentered it after Calhoun left on Saturday, the owner said.

When he arrived on Thursday, Calhoun said, he discovered that one of the windows in the rear of the building was shattered and that the back door had been pried open.

"Nothing was taken. Whoever it was didn't seem to have stayed [overnight] there," he said, and suggested that the structure was merely used for shelter.

Hicks said that so far, no one has found any evidence of an intruder sleeping in the home over the weekend but that an investigation of the fire's cause is underway.

Calhoun said that his family plans to rebuild the burned out structure, which was built by his parents in 1960 and earned a design award from Sunset magazine.

- Marian Schinske

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