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Kelly Brezina, beset by a series of personal and business hardships in the past couple of months, suffered another harsh blow Monday afternoon.
The 59-year-old commercial kitchen equipment business owner, his daughter, 23, and his 20-month-old granddaughter were in his Kalihi warehouse first-floor office when he heard a loud pop and smelled smoke.
The three-alarm fire destroyed a quarter of the second story of Brezina’s Wholesale Equipment warehouse at 2522 Rose St., roughly a 100-by-75-square-foot two-story metal-and-tile building.
“It’s been a rough couple of months,” daughter KC Brezina said. “I’m a little worried about him. This is his life. My dad’s been doing what he’s doing for 30 years, so for this to happen, it’s heartbreaking. I just hope that he’s OK.”
Smoke and fire swept through the warehouse, set in a dense mix of houses and walk-up apartment buildings.
Fourteen fire companies with 52 personnel responded to the 1:21 p.m. blaze. Firefighters evacuated two elderly residents.
Brezina suffered smoke inhalation, a fire official said, but his daughter and granddaughter, LC Awaya, got out unharmed.
An emotional Kelly Brezina received hugs from friends as he walked to an ambulance wearing an oxygen mask.
KC Brezina tearfully recounted how her father had been out for a month after a May 5 hip replacement. Then on June 6 her uncle, who worked for her father for 30 years and was his right-hand man, died.
On Thursday his office safe was almost completely emptied out by persons unknown.
She said the thief, likely feeling a bit of remorse, left some cash.
“My dad is a very trusting person,” she said.
He hadn’t eaten anything since Thursday, when the burglary occurred, she said.
KC Brezina said she smelled something electrical, and saw smoke upstairs. They all went up.
Just then Kelly Brezina’s friend Lindsey Dymond and his friend Eric Dobrinski dropped in to say hello.
Dobrinski called 911 and carried KC Brezina’s daughter outside.
The two men grabbed a fire extinguisher.
“They tried to put it out with an extinguisher, but it was just going really fast,” KC Brezina said.
She went back in to get some of her daughter’s things from the office.
“My dad went in to grab something,” she said. “The smoke was really bad. It was black. It stank. It just went up really, really fast. … We didn’t know what was going to happen. You’re not thinking straight.”
Dymond said furniture was stored on the second floor.
Acting Battalion Chief Peter Finnegan said firefighters “carried two elderly people out who were too old to walk out themselves,” adding, “We knocked down the fire pretty quickly.”
He said the warehouse was pretty heavily fire-damaged, the ceiling completely burned away.
The fire was under control at 2:12 p.m. and extinguished by 2:42 p.m.
The origin and cause remain under investigation, and no damage estimate was available Thursday afternoon.
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LEILA FUJIMORI / LFUJIMORI@STARADVERTISER.COM