Fire swept through the basement of a three-story, brick building at 7722 Girard Ave. — a landmark known for its slanted, steel beam that runs across the façade — at around 6 p.m. on March 29. Flat-screen televisions and other appliances were ruined at the ground-floor retail store Bang & Olufsen, according to Deborah Marengo, who works at Marengo Morton Architects located on the second floor of the building. Smoke damaged the Marengo Morton Architects office on the second floor and the Interwest Capital Corp. office on the third floor, Marengo said. The phone lines and electricity are still down at the offices, she added. Marengo said the phone line oddly went down around 5:45 p.m. and that the elevator stopped working. She saw smoke curling out of the tiled ground floor. “I called the fire department and met them on Girard Street,” Marengo said. “I looked back at Bang & Olufsen and saw it totally engulfed in smoke.” Marengo said none of the firm’s drawings or files were lost in the fire. Eight fire trucks responded to the call at 6:30 p.m., said fire officals. The basement was full of materials, debris and a maze of passageways and it took firefighters two hours to get the fire under control, according to Maurice Luque, spokesman for the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department. The fire breached the walls and burned into the ceiling of the basement. The fire caused an estimated $200,000 in damage to the building and contents, according to Luque. Electrical wiring in the basement is believed to have caused the fire, Luque said. Nearby buildings were not affected. Firefighters were finally able to leave the scene around1 a.m., Marengo said.