“It’s our source of income…We rely on the car auctions,” Mattie Pil, executive director of the JEC, said Wednesday morning. “We’re a little frazzled.”
Neither the fire department nor JEC had yet put a dollar figure on the fire damage. Pil said she is unsure how long it will take for the JEC to recover financially.
San Francisco fire Capt. Elmer Carr estimated Wednesday that 20 to 30 cars were destroyed in the blaze.
Another 100 were damaged “to some extent” by fire, smoke, water and fallen debris. One hundred more were “lightly damaged” by smoke or melted tar falling from the roof, he said.
But Pil said JEC probably couldn’t sell any of the 300 cars, even those considered lightly damaged.
“From what I see, they’re all full of smoke,” she said. “You can’t sell a car that smells like smoke.”
The extent of financial loss, however, will depend on how fast new donations come into JEC and how soon the local auctions can begin again, she said.
Despite its highly successful auctions, the nonprofit organization run by the Chassidic Rabbi Bentzion Pil and wife Mattie Pil is apparently cash poor right now.
The JEC operates Schneerson Hebrew Day School and programs targeting Russian emigres, such as English and computer-training classes.
JEC moved into a $2 million school building this summer at 34th Avenue and Balboa Street in the Richmond District. It is leasing the building with an option to buy, with a $650,000 payment due by June 15, Pil said. JEC had not begun saving up money for the payment yet, she said.
“This came at a very bad time,” she said about the fire.
And last month, JEC purchased a $950,000 building at 11th Avenue and Clement Street, also in the Richmond District, that it plans to convert into a synagogue. JEC put down $350,000 in cash toward the purchase, she said.
“We don’t have savings because we just bought the synagogue,” she said.
The four-alarm fire was reported at 2:48 p.m. Tuesday in a waterfront building connecting two warehouses at Pier 48, according to fire officials. JEC stored cars in all three buildings at the pier, south of the Bay Bridge.
JEC workers were at the site when the fire started. No one was injured.
Firefighters — 118 altogether — had the blaze under control by 5:01 p.m. Crews stayed on the scene until mid-morning Wednesday to prevent flare-ups at what Carr called one of the city’s “major fires of the year.”
The 60-foot by 120-foot building where the fire started was a “total loss,” Carr said. The rear quarter-sections of the 120-foot by 400-foot warehouses were damaged but likely can be repaired, he added.
The cause of the fire was still under investigation Wednesday when the Bulletin went to press.
“We do not suspect arson at this time,” Carr said after returning from the site on Wednesday morning.
Carr added that arson has not been completely ruled out but investigators hadn’t found any incendiary device at the site.
Firefighters were instead checking into the activities in the building where the fire started. JEC has a permit that allows it only to store cars there, not to do any type of repair or alteration, Carr said.
“We’re examining what was happening there,” he said.
Pil said she was sure that JEC was only storing cars in the buildings. Cars that require mechanical work are sent to repair shops, she said.
All three buildings, leased by the JEC from the Port of San Francisco, were used to store second-hand cars and boats that the nonprofit group auctions every Sunday morning.
This weekend’s auction has been canceled. The JEC was already preparing to move into a new waterfront space before the fire.
Pil said the San Francisco auction was selling 80 to 100 cars a week but added that JEC’s other auctions in Los Angeles and New Jersey will not be affected by the fire.
The center has insurance, Pil said, but she expected the money would cover only the buildings.
JEC attracted national media coverage earlier this year when the Wall Street Journal published an article scrutinizing the JEC and its car auctions.
The state Attorney General’s Office continues an “open investigation” of the JEC.
According to the most recent reports filed with the state, the charity reported donations of 6,166 cars worth $4.52 million from December 1993 to July 1995. Although newer reports were due in August, the charity has received extensions until February 1997 to turn in more current information.