Fire damages Palmer-area home

PALMER — A fire in a subdivision west of Palmer caused substantial damage to a home last week.

“I would say that the house received significant damage. It would be up to the insurance company to say whether they were going to make repairs or declare it a total loss,” said Todd Russell, assistant chief and training coordinator for the Palmer Fire Department.

He said the fire, which was reported in the afternoon of July 23 in the Midtown Estates subdivision off of the Palmer-Wasilla Highway, hadn’t fully involved the home when crews arrived.

“Fire was showing from the back of the house with smoke coming out from under the front eaves,” he said. “We had a couple of crews make an interior attack and they stopped it.”

He said the unofficial preliminary cause of the blaze appears to have been a smoker — as in a device for smoking food — behind the house.

“It actually started outside the house and went up the outside wall and into the attic space, so the second story roof was pretty much gone. The second story received the most fire damage, but the whole house received significant smoke damage,” Russell said.

He said neighbors reported hearing an explosion. The likely cause of that was a propane tank at the back of the house.

“There were no civilians hurt. We did have some heat exhaustion in firefighters and one was transported (to a hospital) with heat exhaustion,” Russell said.

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