Santa Rosa fire officials and police are still trying to determine the cause of a fire that destroyed most of the contents of a garage in northwest Santa Rosa early Tuesday morning.
Emergency dispatchers received a report of the fire, on the 3600 block of Airway Drive near Hopper Avenue, at 2:10 a.m. There were also reports of an explosion.
Firefighters arrived on-scene in about five minutes and saw heavy smoke coming from the garage, which was part of a duplex and below the residence's living quarters, said Battalion Chief Mark Basque. Basque responded to the blaze with three fire engines and one water truck.
They contained the fire in about 15 minutes, he said, but spent "quite a bit of time" there trying to determine the cause and overhauling the garage, which had many personal items stored in it.
Almost all of those items were destroyed by heat and smoke if not the the fire itself, Basque said.
Basque said the Santa Rosa Police Department was called to the scene for a possible arson investigation because there were "some indicators that didn't look right." However, he added, "We're not ready to call it arson yet." There was also no real evidence of an explosion, he said.
The people living in the home were not there at the time of the fire and have not yet been contacted.
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