Blaze damages Palmer house

By Andrew Wellner

Frontiersman

PALMER — Fire badly damaged a home on Lucas Road on Monday morning.

Two fire trucks, ambulances and a dozen firefighters responded to the red two-story home about noon. Up the road, police directed traffic near the fire hydrant used as a water supply.

On scene, a ladder truck gave firefighters access to the upper story, where they chopped a hole in the wall with a chainsaw, allowing trapped smoke to billow out.

“It’s the safest way for us to access the roof,” acting fire chief Bruce Axtell said of why they brought out the ladder truck.

The alternative — climbing up an extension ladder with a chainsaw — can get pretty dicey and is not something firefighters like to do, he said.

Axtell said one woman was home at the time of the fire. She called firefighters and escaped unharmed.

The acting chief said the fire appeared to be electrical, but emphasized that it had yet to be investigated and he couldn’t say for sure what caused the blaze.

He said it appeared to have started in the front of the house, near the arctic entry.

“That’s where most of the fire was when we got here,” Axtell said.

The flames then moved up into the living room and the attic, necessitating they cut the hole to get at it.

Axtell offered an initial damage estimate of something in the neighborhood of $30,000, but characterized that number as a wild guess.

Shortly after 1 p.m., Axtell said the fire was out. As he spoke, his crews threw chunks of sheetrock through an open second-story window.

“We’re in what we call the mop-up stage,” he said on scene. His crews were working to move furniture and other items into the middle of a room and cover them with tarps to avoid further smoke and water damage.

“We call it salvage and overhaul. It’s an important part of our customer service,” he said.

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