Fire destroys doctor’s office in Talkeetna

TALKEETNA — A downtown doctor’s office burned down Tuesday night.

According to Tim Morgan, a captain with the Talkeetna Fire Department, the call to respond to the Talkeetna Denali Family Medical Clinic on the corner of C Street and 1st Street went out at 3 a.m.

As a volunteer department, Morgan said, it takes Talkeetna firefighters a little bit of time to get from their homes to the fire station and then to the fire.

“We got on scene 25 minutes after our page-out,” he said. “En route we had gotten information from dispatch via people calling 911 that the house was fully involved.”

When firefighters arrived, Morgan said, the fire had blown out windows of the clinic and flames were through the roof.

“This fire had been burning for some time prior to it being noticed by anybody,” he said.

Also on scene, responders learned that Dr. James Yates, who lived and worked there, was not home. Morgan said firefighters decided on a defensive approach to the fire — basically keeping it from spreading into the trees or to other buildings.

Yates was down the road eating a hot dog when the fire was noticed, he said. He made a trip about 14 miles from Talkeetna to get some bleach and was at a Tesoro station eating when he got a call.

“I was in there less than 10 minutes when I got a call telling me my house had blown up,” he said. “I thought it was a joke. Twenty-two minutes after walking out the door, I get that call. When I come back, it was gone, history.”

The caller wasn’t joking. Yates returned to find his home and office fully engulfed. By the time he got to the scene, the community had already begun helping. A local businessman offered a free appartment and space at the airport to continue his medical practice.

“Before the house even burned down I had a new practice and a new place to live,” he said. “That was my only concern, disruption of care, so we did all right. We saw one patient the day of the fire then were in full swing the second day (Wednesday).”

Morgan said Talkeetna had help from Houston and Willow fire departments, and that crews were on scene until about 8 a.m.

Sue Deyoe, news director for KTNA radio in Talkeetna, said the clinic was kind of a second option for residents. Some live closer to Yates than to the Sunshine Clinic out on Talkeetna Spur Road. Some just prefer his services to those of the clinic.

“He’s like what I would think of as an old-time family kind of doctor who makes house calls and that kind of stuff,” Deyoe said.

As far as the building is concerned, she said it was a log structure, but not one that is on the village’s list of historic sites.

Still, it’s been there for years, though she wasn’t sure how long. Yates, likewise, has been in Talkeetna a long time.

“For people who went to him it was a huge deal,” she said of the fire.

Morgan said the fire was a tough one to fight. Yates had five-pound kegs of gunpowder stored in there that were going off. There was also a fuel tank out back about which firefighters had to be careful. There was a potential for the fire to spread; Talkeetna’s a small town, but the downtown is relatively compact.

All things considered, Morgan said, “Things turned out well.”

As for a cause for the blaze, he said he couldn’t speculate. Alaska State Troopers report the stovepipe of Yates’ wood stove is being eyed as a likely cause.

“They had been working on that earlier in the day trying to get some kreosote out,” Morgan said, and the doctor had lit a fire in there soon after. “That was his main source of heat.”

Deyoe said she expects that soon enough someone will be holding a fund-raiser for Yates. She said that not because anybody told her they were going to, but because she knows her town and that’s how Talkeetna works.

“And everybody will help build his building,” she said.

Morgan said he’s heard the plan is to get a new building up before the snow flies.

Yates said the house was insured, but “it was probably under-insured.” The settlement from the insurance company likely won’t be enough to cover all the rebuilding costs, but he said that’s OK.

“I thought several times about upping our insurance each time we renewed it, but didn’t,” he said.

What’s important is he’s OK, as is his English sheepdog Penny, and he hasn’t had to stop treating patients, Yates said.

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