Popular lodge near Willow burns

WILLOW — Fire gutted a lodge early Tuesday morning near mile 71 Parks Highway.

“We had quite a bit of apparatus up there. But when our first unit got on the scene the flames were already coming out the doors,” said borough Director of Emergency Services Dennis Brodigan.

He said the Pioneer Lodge was still standing but will likely have to be leveled.

“From what I understand, it was pretty much totaled,” he said.

Brodigan said the call came to respond at 3:27 a.m., and fire crews were on scene in about 15 minutes. Trucks and firefighters came from the Willow, Talkeetna Houston, West Lakes, Caswell and Central Mat-Su fire departments.

The fire was similar to the one that destroyed Susitna Valley Jr./Sr. High School in June of 2007, he said, in that the building had undergone multiple waves of reconstruction making the building a tough one in which to fight a fire.

“This lodge had multiple roofs, at least three. They just built the new roof over the old over the old,” Brodigan said. “It was tough to get any ventilation up there.”

No one was inside at the time.

“They weren’t open for business,” Brodigan said. “The preliminary report was that it started somewhere in the area of the kitchen.”

An e-mail sent to an address found on the lodge’s Web site was not returned as of press time. The lodge’s phone number listed on the site was not in service.

The site, which had no mention of the fire as of Thursday afternoon, says the lodge was established in 1970. Accommodations included two cabins, four motel rooms, a bar and a restaurant.

A woman who answered the phone at the Willow Trading Post Thursday afternoon said the lodge had been around a long time and was a popular spot for locals.

Brodigan said he’d heard they had good pizza but “I’d never been in it.”

“It was a very nice-looking building, big log wooden structure,” he said.

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