A fire that started in an upstairs apartment of the Waterhouse building in downtown Bolinas last Friday displaced five residential tenants and seven businesses, including a hair salon, a real estate office and 2 Mile Surf Shop, which closed its doors indefinitely. The cause remains under investigation by the local and county fire departments.
“Everything I touched had a temperature,” said Evan Wilhelm, who was one of the first to re-enter the building to salvage paperwork from the Bolinas Community Land Trust office. Though the flames had been knocked down, the two feet of water she waded through were hot.
Sarah Butler, a broker for Oceanic Realty who manages the apartments for the owner, Santa Barbara resident Greg Welsh, said an insurance company planned to visit the site this week to assess the damages. Mr. Welsh, who has owned the property since the early 1970s, could not be reached for this story, but Ms. Butler said, “I’d really like to know [the cause]. I don’t want to accuse anyone, but I don’t think it was electrical.”
Several tenants expressed concerns to the Light about the state of the multi-use building, which they said had fallen into disrepair.
Following a report of flames at around 8 p.m., the town’s fire department was first to the scene. By the time personnel arrived, everyone had safely evacuated. It took around an hour for 20 firefighters, who also responded from Stinson Beach, Point Reyes Station and Throckmorton, to extinguish the blaze. Firefighters helped tenants salvage what they could until midnight, and the Bolinas crew kept watch until the sun came up.
Drew Reinstein, who owns the surf shop and rents one of four apartments upstairs, was in the ocean until around 9 p.m. Walking home, he saw black smoke. “I hadn’t heard the sirens yet, but as I got around the bend, I saw the trucks, and the lights, and the people. I stood there in my wetsuit, and I watched it burn.”
When Mr. Reinstein entered the building the next day, he found most of his inventory ruined. The surfboards “popped” in the heat and the wetsuits melted. This week, he announced that the store is closed for the foreseeable future, though community members are rallying to raise funds.
A hair salon that Marc Greco has run out of another first-floor space for the past decade also suffered extensive damages. A GoFundMe page is asking for $30,000, half of what Mr. Greco estimates he lost.
In addition to the two shops, the upstairs apartments bore the brunt of the fire. All the residents—including one who has lived there for nearly 30 years—are staying with friends or family for the time being. The other ground-level businesses—the Bolinas Book Exchange, Seashore Realty, the land trust and a tech support company—suffered various levels of fire, smoke and water damage.
Leondro Brady, a Bolinas native who runs BoBo Tech, said he was in his office when the fire started. “I very quickly and energetically removed all the stuff from the building I could while there were flames overhead,” he said. “I was looking around, asking myself, ‘What’s that worth? What’s that worth?’” With luck, his office space was largely spared.
Keith Huntley, who lived upstairs, has temporarily closed his burrito stand that operated on the street outside.
Ms. Wilhelm said the land trust’s employees were already mostly working from home, which minimized losses. She was able to save the paper applications from residents seeking emergency rental assistance.
Melinda Stone, who helms the Bolinas Book Exchange, said only a fraction of the books sustained water damage. The exchange was still offering curbside pickup this week.
Connie Pepper-Lewis, a realtor with Seashore Realty, said she and her partner, Flower Fraser, had continued working out of their office during the pandemic. Ms. Fraser, the owner, was there when the fire erupted and was able to save the most important materials.
Ms. Pepper-Lewis’s grandparents built the Waterhouse building in the 1960s. Her family’s legacy in Bolinas is deep: five generations back, Nellie and Frank Waterhouse cut Brighton Avenue, Terrace Avenue, Park Avenue and Canyon Road out of pastureland, beginning in the 1880s.
In subsequent years, her father’s construction company built the structures that today house the post office, St. Aidan’s Episcopal Church and the property that came to be known as the Waterhouse building. After his parents passed, Ms. Pepper-Lewis’s father and the other heirs sold the Waterhouse building to Mr. Welsh in 1973. For a time, he operated a dental office in town.
Various businesses have found their home in the space over the years, including the town’s first hardware store.
Mr. Welsh has kept the rents affordable, but has neglected the aging building, tenants said.
“There was nothing updated in those units: it was not retrofitted, the wiring was old, all the plumping was galvanized,” Ms. Pepper-Lewis said. “It was pretty much a tinderbox waiting to happen.”