Garage fire destroys Talkeetna home

TALKEETNA — A fire in a detached garage ended up taking a nearby log home with it Thursday night.

There were a few things complicating the fire at Mile 2.2 of Talkeetna Spur Road, said Talkeetna Fire Chief Ken Farina.

First, it was an off-the-grid home, so there was plenty of combustible generator fuel on hand. Second, there was a very long driveway. Firefighters got an engine and a tanker right up close to the home, but couldn’t get many more trucks in there.

“We just laid a quarter-mile of hose in from the blacktop we pumped it into the house,” he said.

He described it as a relay system.

“The fire actually started in the garage, it’s unknown exactly where in the garage. The garage was just about 10, 12 feet away from the home,” Farina said. “The home was an exposure and the exposure caught fire. We almost had it stopped, but we ran out of water in the initial stages.”

He said he was second on scene with a tanker. The engine was already there when he arrived.

“If I would have gotten there 10 minutes earlier I think things may have been different, but you never know,” he said.

The home and the garage were a total loss.

“But luckily they were insured,” Farina said.

American Red Cross of Alaska’s Mat-Su District says in a press release that two of its volunteers responded to the fire to help the displaced family. The organization put two adults up in a hotel and provided them with food and clothing. The organization pledged to continue working with the family “as they rebuild their lives.”

That the home was built from logs, Farina said, probably actually made the fire easier to fight.

“It’s heavy construction, so it doesn’t burn as quickly,” Farina said.

The fire also spread into the nearby trees. Farina said that the state Division of Forestry sent firefighters and a water-dumping helicopter.

“When we were dealing with the structure, they were in the woods,” Farina said.

Also helping out were equipment and personnel from fire departments in Houston, Willow and Meadow Lakes. The nascent Caswell Fire Department even sent some people.

“We used Su Valley High School. We have two underground tanks there that hold 33,000 gallons in one and 21,000 in the other,” Farina said.

Tankers shuttled back and forth between the fire and the high school, bringing full loads of water each time.

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