Blaze leaves fire chief homeless

WASILLA — Fire severely damaged the Meadow Lakes home of Houston Fire Chief Tom Hood Friday, leaving him and his family seeking temporarily shelter from the Red Cross.

Mat-Su Borough emergency responders were dispatched to the fire at about 2:30 p.m., and by about 3:45 p.m., the main body of the fire was extinguished, leaving only spot fires inside the structure to be extinguished, according to incident commander and West Lakes Fire Chief John Fairchild. Officials didn’t yet know the cause of the fire, and didn’t have a complete damage amount estimate, Fairchild said.

Hood waited for the Red Cross with his family in a park across from the road, and struggled with tears at times as he watched co-workers battle a fire in the house he built at the property he’s owned since about 1980, when he filed a $10 homestead claim on the property that would eventually become 5401 Greensward Drive, Hood said. Two of three family Yorkshire terriers died in the fire, though neighbors managed to save the youngest one, Hood said. No humans were injured in the fire, he said.

“I homesteaded this subdivision,” he said. “I built the house over time.”

The house itself was painted green, a concession to his wife Donna’s green thumb, Hood said. The fire also left intact a large hand-painted mural of a tree and forest animals on the front, even as firefighters and daylight were visible inside spraying water and foam.

“She wanted a greenhouse,” Hood said. “So I painted the house green. Then I said I always wanted a tree house, and she put a tree on it.”

The house will likely need to be torn down and rebuilt, Hood said.

Fire officials told him the fire started in the rear of the house, which was something of a mystery. Hood said he’d taken extra precautions constructing the house, and couldn’t think of a possible nearby ignition source.

“There’s nothing there,” he said.

Before he became the Houston fire chief, Hood was the Meadow Lakes fire chief for several years, and owned the Mile 49 Café — now Hula Hands — near the intersection of Church Road and the Parks Highway. Responding to numerous house fires over the years don’t make responding to your own house fire any easier, Hood said.

“It’s worse,” he said. “All the good stories, my pictures. I had so much (expletive) in there, I don’t even know what I had.”

The home was insured against fire damage, but the family — Hood is raising grandchildren Sonny, 4, and Cathlyn, 6 — was contemplating a short-term future without toys and limited personal possessions.

Friday’s fire marks the second time fire has burned the house of a Houston Fire Department employee within the last year. The house of firefighter Shawn Skiles burned for the second time in October 2015, after fire displaced Skiles and his family in September 2014.

Hood said he wanted to build his own house again.

“I got a motor home,” he said. “I got insurance, but that don’t replace everything.”

Contact reporter Brian O’Connor at 352-2270, brian.oconnor@frontiersman.com, or on Twitter @reporterbriano.

Correction: This story has been updated to correct the present name of the Mile 49 Cafe.