1 dead in Willow-area fire

WILLOW — An early morning cabin fire Monday claimed the life of a person in a cabin at Mile 62, Parks Highway.

The fire was reported at 3:13 a.m., according to a press release from Alaska State Troopers. As of press time they had not made positive identification or released the name of the deceased.

Mat-Su Borough District 2 Fire Chief Bill Gamble said he was in charge of fighting that fire and described the property as having two cabins, a main one and a rental. It was the main cabin that burned, the one where the property owner lived.

“The renter woke up and saw flames coming out of the eaves of the cabin. It was pretty much fully involved at that time,” Gamble said.

He said the renter told his crews that the homeowner was inside. A quick check of the scene — owner’s vehicle still in the driveway, no tracks leading away from the structure other than those made by the renter — lead them to conclude the homeowner was still there. Gamble said investigators from the state fire marshal’s office investigate each fire fatality. He called for an investigator on the way to the scene.

“We were pretty darn sure that this was going to involve one, so I called and requested one be dispatched,” he said.

Though fire departments try to aggressively fight fires when it’s clear someone’s inside, the flames were too hot to send firefighters inside right away.

“It took us a couple of hours to get it cooled down enough that we could put people inside. Then we did and we were able to find the owner victim of the cabin inside and he was deceased,” Gamble said.

He used the pronoun “he” throughout the interview to refer to the deceased property owner, but the identity of the person who died in the fire has not been released.

Gamble said the cabin — a 15-by-20 or so long structure with a main floor and a loft — was still sound enough to walk in. The owner was found on the lower level near the window.

“It appeared to us that he had come down the stairs and was maybe trying to get out the window but we don’t know that for sure,” Gamble said.

The fire marshal will be the one to determine the cause, but Gamble said in talking to the renter he learned that both cabins were heated with Toyo stoves that weren’t working because the power was out.

However, the homeowner’s propane stove was working, Gamble said, and the renter told firefighters he’d planned on using that to heat his cabin.

“He apparently had all four burners going on his propane stove,” Gamble said.

He said the renter, “even cautioned the gentleman, told him to be cautious heating his cabin that way.”

Gamble said that even though temperatures in the area had dropped from 29 degrees on Sunday to 6 degrees below zero on Monday morning, he got a good response of 20 to 25 firefighters from the Willow, West Lakes, Houston and Central Mat-Su fire departments.

Alaska State Troopers also showed up to help direct traffic. Fire apparatus were partially staged on the highway so there was a need for traffic calming.

Given that the ground around actively pumping fire trucks tends to get pretty icy with all the excess water spraying and dripping, Gamble said he also makes a point to call out Department of Transportation sanding trucks to those kinds of fires.

“It’s just to make sure the vehicles moving through the emergency scene can do so safely,” he said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.