Fires keep departments busy

BIG LAKE — How did you spend your Thanksgiving? Were you out in the cold fighting a potentially difficult fire? Some of your neighbors were.

The fire in question was reported at 1:39 a.m., Nov. 21 on Lilly Lake Road in Meadow Lakes north of the Parks Highway between Big Lake and Pittman roads.

“The first units got on location four minutes after our dispatch,” said West Lakes assistant chief Steve Barenburg. “It was 25 percent involved and they had a knock down in 38 minutes.”

He said this wasn’t a typical structure fire.

“This unit did have multiple add-ons, which made for some real interesting firefighting,” Barenburg said. “It had been lifted up and then built underneath it and then built on top of it.”

He said firefighters and trucks turned out from the West Lakes, Houston and Central Mat-Su fire departments. Firefighters called in its large, white command van to help in the investigation into how the fire started.

“Preliminary investigation is it was accidental, but still undetermined,” Barenburg said. “It was in a ceiling of the first floor, but the floor of the second floor. They’re thinking electrical.”

But, he added, it’s still too early to say for sure how the blaze began.

As for the homeowners, the fire was contained to the second story and there was smoke damage in the third, which Barenburg said displaced five people.

“One dog died and Red Cross was called and they did assist them in housing and probably some clothes,” he said.

In the past year, Red Cross of Alaska reports that it handled 238 cases and provided more than 600 individuals with direct services that totaled nearly $170,000.

He estimated the damage at $100,000, but noted that insurance companies may have their own ideas on how much was damaged. To have saved most of the home and knocked down the fire in just 42 minutes, though, probably classifies it in firefighter parlance as a “good stop.”

Speaking of good stops — two days prior, Central Mat-Su Fire Department responded to a smaller blaze with potentially more property at stake.

About mid-day Nov. 20, a van delivering donations to Value Village caught fire on the loading dock, a few hundred yards from the main fire station in downtown.

“It started up near the engine compartment and was fully involved when we got there, threatening the structure,” said assistant Central Mat-Su fire chief Michael Keenan. “It did not spread to the structure.”

He said that a dozen firefighters responded and multiple fire trucks, dousing the blaze quickly. One employee in the strip mall had to be taken to the hospital for smoke inhalation.

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