Busy March gives firefighters warmup for spring season

WASILLA — From chimney fires to burning adding machine paper, it’s been a busy time lately for the Central Mat-Su Fire Department.

Acting Chief Michael Keenan said Wednesday that since March 10 the department has been called out to six active fires. He couldn’t pin down any particular reason so many fires have sparked lately other than it’s just the nature of the firefighting game.

“We’ll have a month when it’s dead and then we’ll get slammed,” Keenan said.

The first fire in the latest batch came at 2:25 a.m. March 10. Neighbors in one of the subdivisions to the south of the Parks Highway had called in saying they could see a glow in the sky and could smell smoke. It turned out to be a fire at a home on Creekside Drive.

“It was a delayed call because nobody saw it. It kind-of sat back off the road,” Keenan said. “You can imagine how much fire there was for people to see the glow.”

The place was fully engulfed when firefighters arrived, Keenan said. There wasn’t much they could do except keep it from spreading into the woods. The property was a rental and the tenants had recently moved out. Keenan said the fire is still under investigation but listed as suspicious.

“The area of origin where we feel the fire started had no sources of ignition,” Keenan said.

The next call came early March 13 about half-past midnight — chimney fire on Kimberly Street — north of the Parks Highway between Deskas Street and Church Road.

The fire was burning inside a wall firefighters had to tear out to get at it, Keenan said. The fire caused $9,000 damage, but the house was largely undamaged. Keenan chalks it up as a “big-time save.”

“They could still stay in the house. We covered it up for them,” he said.

Firefighters didn’t have to wait long for the next call, Keenan said. They were back at the station cleaning up when their pagers went off.

“At 3:01 a.m. that same morning the dispatch center paged out the world for a structure fire,” Keenan said.

Crews were sent to Keshon Circle just off Knik-Goose Bay Road near Mile 12. Initial reports said not everybody had made it out.

“Fortunately, the family was able to get out,” Keenan said.

The next afternoon another call came, reported at a small, boarded-up cabin near Mile 46 Parks Highway, just before the overpass heading into Houston.

Someone had gotten into the two-story, 20-foot by 20-foot building and found some rolls of paper, like the kind used for adding machines, Keenan said. The paper was unspooled and run to a pile of material in the center of the house.

“They were using those as trailers to set the fire,” Keenan said.

On Monday, the department had another pair of back-to-back calls. Both, Keenan said, were good saves.

The first came in the afternoon on East Southshore Drive off of Engstrom Road and was for a welding spark that had embedded into the wall of a garage and started burning the insulation.

“He pretty much got the fire out before we got there,” Keenan said. “We just checked it with a thermal camera.”

Later that evening firefighters went to a call on Shamrock Road — somewhat coincidentally, considering it was St. Patrick’s Day — off Hollywood Road west of Vine Road. The homeowner had gone out into her yard and noticed a wisp of smoke coming from the attic.

“The property owner’s son said he had heard things falling in the attic, but he thought it was just ice melting,” Keenan said.

After the mother saw smoke, the son got up on the roof to see what was up and noticed roofing tar was melting near the chimney. Firefighters arrived and discovered the home’s roof beams had burned almost the whole way through.

“It had been smoldering for a very long time,” Keenan said.

Firefighters had to tear out a wall to get into the attic and properly extinguish the fire, he said. In theory, had they not noticed the smoke, the roof could eventually have come down on the family.

“That one I’m going to estimate probably right around $10,000 [damage] because they’re going to have replace that whole roof,” Keenan said.

He said the home didn’t have smoke detectors. Firefighters installed some.

Keenan compared the start of this month to January, a month when the department logged 140 fire calls. Most of January’s calls were small — activated carbon monoxide detectors and the like and not a lot were actual fires.

“Those little calls are the ones that take it out of us,” he said.

Although not resource-intensive, responders still have to get to the station, suit up and roll a fire truck. If things quiet down now, though, they likely won’t stay that way for long. Wildfire season is right around the corner, as evidenced by the patches of cured grass visible where once there was snow.

Which means for folks looking to start a controlled burn, “it’d be better to do it now,” Keenan said.

That is, so long as it’s not windy.

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