The Nov. 26 fire swept through buildings holding used cars the JEC collected for auction. The organization has permits to store vehicles but not to repair them.
This week, however, the San Francisco Fire Department said the fire started when a jack holding up the rear of one of the JEC’s cars slipped and the vehicle’s gas tank fell on an electric light.
“We have a mechanic who, after being questioned, admitted” to positioning the car in such a manner, said Lt. Al Silvestri of the fire investigation-arson unit. “We have physical evidence to support it.”
Nonetheless, fire department officials are not ready to say whether the JEC will be cited for violating its permit. “The only thing we can say at this point is there are further aspects that need to be looked into,” Lt. Paul Fuhrman said.
Pil said that the JEC does not perform car repair in the Pier 48 warehouses, but rather “car checking, assessment.” At the most, he said, JEC mechanics replace and recharge batteries or change flat tires.
More extensive work, he said, takes place in a separate shop.
After the fire broke out, “I told workers not to worry, to tell the whole truth,” the rabbi said. “They were cooperative.”
The worker responsible for starting the fire will not be fired, Pil added, since a manager told employees they would not lose their jobs as long as they were honest with investigators.
JEC has built a formidable business selling used cars here, as well as in Los Angeles and New Jersey. According to Pil’s wife, Mattie, recent weekly auctions in San Francisco have sold 80 to 100 cars.
The four-alarm fire — which one firefighter called one of the city’s “major fires of the year” — was reported in a waterfront building connecting two warehouses at Pier 48. The organization stored secondhand cars and boats in all three buildings at the pier, which is located south of the Bay Bridge and which the JEC leases from the Port of San Francisco.
An estimated 20 to 30 cars were destroyed in the blaze and an additional 100 were damaged by smoke, fire, water and fallen debris. Another 100 cars were harmed by smoke or melting tar falling from the roof.
Though JEC workers were present at the site when the fire started, no one was injured.
Pil said he is not yet sure how much financial damage his organization, which insured the site and its contents, sustained. Nor does he know how the new revelations about the fire’s cause will affect the JEC’s insurance.
What he does know is that the JEC has suffered financially from the fire. Pil said he thinks the loss will force the center to cancel some of its scheduled advertising.
“Less advertisement…less cars. Less profit will come in,” he said.
Since the fire, the rabbi said, the JEC has received $50,000 from a former president of its board of directors and an additional $50,000 in loans from other friends of the center.