Caddy Goes Up in Smoke

Thick clouds of smoke swirled over Swarthmore Avenue last Friday, resulting from a fire that engulfed a 1984 Cadillac El Dorado in the CVS parking lot at about 1 p.m. Quick response from Fire Station 69 kept the fire from spreading to a silver Acura parked next to the Cadillac. ‘I didn’t know what happened,’ CVS Store Manager Angel Blancia said. ‘I was in the office in a meeting when someone said there was a fire, so I called 911. ‘I only called two minutes ago and they’re already here,’ he told a reporter as he watched firemen pour water on the flames. ‘That’s a quick response.’ The owner of the car, Palisadian Paul Boroughs, and his friend Susan See had gone into the store for a quick purchase and looked shocked as the realization hit them that it was Boroughs’ car ablaze. ‘When we pulled in, the car was smoking,’ See said. ‘I asked him if it was okay and he said it was the oil.’ Despite Boroughs’ reassurance, See decided not to leave her border collie Sparkly in the car and instead tied the dog up in front of the store. It proved to be a fortunate decision. ‘Thank God I didn’t leave him,’ See said. ‘I only lost a couple of notebooks.’ The firemen handed her a wet, dripping notebook and a Ziploc bag of pens. The vintage Cadillac had been left in a horse pen in Topanga from 1996 until this past Christmas, when a friend gave it to Boroughs. ‘I just returned from taking it on a test drive to Nevada,’ he said. ‘It worked fine.’ He had purchased three new tires for the car and was planning on finding other parts to restore it. Four nights before the parking lot fire, the car started running hot and Boroughs discovered that someone had pulled the radiator hose while the car was parked on Bienveneda. He put the hose back on and filled the radiator with water, but ‘I had been having trouble ever since,’ he said. After the fire had been extinguished, Boroughs peered under the hood of his car and noticed the radiator hose was once again loose. ‘Someone did it again. There’s no clamp on it,’ he said. ‘I don’t know why anyone would do that. I don’t know why anyone would hate me to do that.’ Boroughs had liability insurance, but not enough coverage to help him obtain a replacement vehicle. ‘This just tells me I’ll be riding the bus again,’ he said.