Blaze consumes home, cars

MEADOW LAKES — An early evening fire destroyed one car, damaged another and totaled a house Monday evening.

“It was the structure burning that caught a ccouple of vehicles on fire,” West Lakes Fire Department Battalion Chief Jim Keel said Tuesday morning. “One was a total loss the other one did a couple of thousand dollars of damage.”

The fire was first reported at about 6 p.m.

Keel said the home near Huckleberry Drive and Blue Spruce Circle in the neighborhoods off of Schrock Drive was eight years old and probably worth something in the $200,000 range.

Fifty percent of the structure was on fire when the first firefighters arrived. They got it knocked down in 40 minutes but it was still a total loss. Keel said crews were on scene until 1 a.m. Tuesday. Keel said a detached garage probably 30 feet away from the main home survived without catching fire.

He said the fire was discovered when one of the people living there looked out the window to see smoke. By the time the first firefighters arrived they were all outside but were going back in. Keel said they’d stopped going back in just before he arrived.

Two of the residents were elderly, he said, and possibly handicapped. The cause of the blaze is still unknown though Keel said investigators are taking a look at smoking as a possible cause.

To have to fight a house fire at the same time as a vehicle fire isn’t exactly uncommon. Still, Keel said that fighting structure fires and fighting vehicle fires are different ballgames.

Structures present difficulties because it’s not always clear how buildings are laid out. Vehicles can be dangerous because people carry all manner of stuff in them that can get dangerous when exposed to extreme heat — gas cans, ammunition, etc.

In fact, on scene Monday evening people were asked to stay back because there was live ammunition inside.

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