Houston firefighter homeless after blaze

MEADOW LAKES — A Thursday morning fire left a Houston firefighter and his girlfriend homeless and injured a firefighter responding to the blaze, authorities said.

The fire happened about 8 a.m. along North Finsbury Lane, according to borough Deputy Emergency Services Director Clint Vardemann. No one was injured before firefighters arrived, but the mobile home that burned, which belonged to Houston fire fighter Shawn Stiles, was a complete lost.

“It happened so quickly that the smoke alarms didn’t have a chance to go off before the house was engulfed,” Stiles said.

Stiles said he’d recently returned from the Bristol Bay Borough, where he had been working as a firefighter. Officials were still investigating, but Stiles said he’d been told a malfunctioning natural gas heater was most likely the cause. Stiles said he’d purchased the house within the last year.

Some reports incorrectly said fireworks have played a role in the blaze. Stiles said he warned responders about fireworks he had safely stored inside the residence in case they did ignite, but that the fireworks neither ignited nor played a role in the fire’s ignition.

The Houston Fire station, unlike some other facilities, has no quarters, so the Red Cross was temporarily housing Stiles at a local hotel Thursday afternoon.

Stiles’ sister, Katheryn Baker, whose family had suffered a house fire of their own within the last year, had been keeping some of her property at the Finsbury Lane house.

“She still had a bunch of her property there and she was going to move it into her house,” he said. “I guess the fire had other plans.”

Firefighters at the Houston station were accepting small items for donations. Baker had established a campaign on the popular crowd-sourcing charity site www.gofundme.com, which had raised about $110 of a stated goal of $3,000 by Saturday afternoon.

“His home is now gone,” Baker wrote. “He lost all but a few items of clothing. Luckily, every one made out alive, and that’s a lot to be thankful for.”

Contact Brian O’Connor at 352-2269 or brian.oconnor@frontiersman.com