Large fire damages Angelo’s Meats in Petaluma

A stray spark left from a grinder used to sharpen knives is believed to have caused a large fire Monday afternoon at Angelo’s Meats, the longtime smokehouse in rural Petaluma.

While the 1:24 p.m. blaze did extensive damage to back areas of the shop, it was controlled before it could spread to the meat shop or to the home of Angelo Ibleto, who has prepared and sold meat products from his Adobe Road property for more than four decades.

Losses included a corrugated metal shipping container filled with cases of jarred salsas, mustards, sauces, olives and other specialty food items bearing the Angelo’s label, as well as packages of the labels themselves - featuring Ibleto’s smiling face set into the middle white strip on an Italian flag.

Also destroyed were cartons of empty jars and bottles of wine stored for use in making sausages and other meat products, as well as dry goods, stored in what was a walk-in cooler now used simply for storage.

Several thousand pounds of meat sealed in a huge adjacent freezer unit escaped the flames that burned nearby, though a damaged power line sent Ibleto, his family and his workers scrambling to relocate some meats and arrange for electrical work that would restore freezer operations.

“We get this back, going a little at a time, but we get it back,” Ibleto, an Italian immigrant, said as he glanced around at charred timbers and blackened property left behind by the fire.

Ibleto’s operation, which also goes by the name Angelo’s Smokehouse, is a collection of metal containers and sheds that, together with his main shop, reflect the growth and ad hoc expansion of his business over time. The place is crammed with tray racks, barbecue equipment, ovens, saws and a variety of other equipment.

Ibleto, 81, had been sharpening knives out behind the storage units about 20 minutes before the fire ignited but was inside his home nearby when the flames erupted.

Two employees working at the time, Josue Macias and Kristi Martinelli, were mixing beef jerky and spices and weren’t aware of the fire out back until people passing by on Adobe Road brought it to their attention, Macias said.

When they looked over the top of the building, they saw a dark cloud of smoke and flame. About the same time Ibleto’s daughter, Angela Dellinger, looked back in her mirror as she drove away from the business and noticed the plume herself.

Ibleto said he heard a scream that alerted him that something was wrong.

A mass of fire engines from Rancho Adobe, Petaluma and Wilmar fire departments responded and frantically accounted for Ibleto, who was found in his house. Crews laid hoses and doused the fire, though it already had made charcoal out of timbers and roofing wrapped around the assorted structures at the rear of the operation.

Rancho Adobe fire personnel estimated losses at about $190,000, including what was anticipated would be high-priced electrical work.

Rancho Adobe Division Chief Steve Davidson said the fire’s origins back in the same area where Ibleto had been grinding knives in breezy conditions suggested that was the cause. “All you gotta do is get a little bit of wind and some hidden spark,” he said.

Friends and family gathered upon hearing news of the fire, and Ibleto, whose brother Art owns the Cotati catering outfit the Pasta King, appeared in good spirits as he surveyed the scene.

“We gotta mess,” he said.?But he laughed with everyone else when his daughter, on the phone with an insurance representative, laughed mid-call and quipped to anyone within earshot, “It gives new meaning to Angelo’s smoked meat.”