Hermosa Beach firefighters last Saturday morning put out a blaze that severely damaged a single-family home located in the first block of 17th Street.

According to investigators, no one was injured in the fire that originated in the home’s family room at approximately 8:50 a.m. The cause of it has yet to be determined.

Darryl Powers, the Hermosa Beach fire engineer and lead fire investigator for the city, said the fire affected the house and an apartment located over a garage on 17th Court. Both structures sit on the same property.

“Our guys made entry from the front of the residence,” added Powers. “Basically, you want to enter on the opposite side of the building from where the fire is at, so you don’t push it through the rest of the house. You don’t want to push it back into an area that’s not burned. So they entered through the front door of the residence and pushed it out the back door which is where the fire was at, kind of on the patio area.”

Firefighters arrived at the scene just minutes after receiving the emergency call at 8:52 a.m. The residents living at both the house and apartment were not at home at the time of the fire. About 18 firefighters from the cities of Hermosa Beach, Manhattan Beach, Redondo Beach and Torrance arrived at the scene. It took firefighters between 15 and 20 minutes to fully contain and put out the fire.

“It was a fully involved fire when we arrived at the scene,” said Powers. “There was flame and smoke venting, and the windows were already blown out. The blaze was contained in about 15 to 20 minutes. No one was home at the time. One resident had taken a family member to the train station and another one was dropping off his son at school.”

The structural and content damage to the house is estimated to be between $500,000 and $1 million while the apartment sustained no interior damage but did to the exterior.

“There was an extensive, intricately carved antique furniture collection throughout the residence,” said Powers. “At the very minimum the furniture is going to be a huge loss, but I think they will be able to restore much of it. There was a lot of content and structure damage, the house has been added onto three or four times, so there’s also going to be a good deal of construction.”

At this point, Powers does not suspect foul play. He will continue with his investigation, and is expected to reach a conclusion within the next three to four weeks after analyzing photos taken from the scene, and conducting witness and resident interviews.

“We have already conducted a fire-scene investigation which was completed on the day of the fire,” said Powers. “That part of the investigation is kind of a systematic process and many investigators use the same method. I always start from the outside and work inward to the most burned area. I take a lot of photographs before I do anything and then once a consensus is reached among investigators as to where the fire started and what the cause might be, then we focus our investigation on that one particular area. Part of our training is lighting fires to see how they burn, knowing what they look like before and what they look like after. I will basically collect all of the information I can before I write my report.”