BY EMILY MIBACH
Daily Post Staff Writer
Twenty-nine cats died in a studio apartment fire in North Fair Oaks, where hoarding may have been a problem for the unit’s resident, according to the Menlo Park Fire Marshal.
The resident of an apartment at 3158 Glendale Ave. got home from work around 1 a.m. Thursday (July 13) and was greeted by black smoke when he opened the door, according to Fire Marshal Jon Johnston.
The Menlo Park Fire Protection District responded to the fire as the district serves North Fair Oaks, Atherton, East Palo Alto, Menlo Park and West Menlo Park.
The fire was knocked down pretty quickly, Johnston said, but said the studio apartment was “a bit of a mess,” as there appeared to be hoarding in the apartment.
Firefighters escorted two neighbors out of their apartments across the hall, Johnston said. There are three apartments on the second floor of the building at the corner of Glendale and Fifth avenues. The first floor is occupied by a catering business, which appeared to be operating as usual last night.
However, the man’s 29 cats did not make it out of the apartment, according to the Peninsula Humane Society.
The humane society responded to the scene around 1:30 a.m. to pick up the bodies of the 29 cats, said Lisa Van Buskirk, senior vice president of community engagement at the humane society. The corpses will be cremated. But first, the humane society wants to talk to the owner and get more information about the cats. When animal control officers tried to speak to the man yesterday he was “very distraught,” Van Buskirk said.
The apartment was red-tagged, Johnston said. When a Post reporter went by the scene Thursday, workers were boarding up the apartment. The cause of the fire was not known yesterday, said Johnston.
This is so tragic. Somebody in this man’s life should have told him that he needed to surrender these cats, that keeping them there was inhumane.