Unfought fire raises service area issues

BIG LAKE — Things were tense among the ruins of Audrey Williford’s house Wednesday afternoon.

Williford traveled from a shaded tent to a trailer, with a .38-caliber revolver strapped to her hip, chatting constantly on the phone with doctors, neighbors, and relatives. She worried about bears and burglars and a neighborhood feud that appeared bound for court. Along with her husband Michael Williford, she had been living out of a neighbor-contributed recreational vehicle for two weeks since their two-story house burned to the ground. The family and neighbors have taken turns keeping 24-hour watch over the property.

Her teenage granddaughters, Josie and Athena Baty, periodically interrupted an interview to update Audrey about Michael’s blood pressure.

“It’s been hell,” Mrs. Williford said.

At one point during a newspaper interview Wednesday, she abruptly ducked into the camper to check on her husband’s condition.

“It just keeps getting better,” she said sarcastically, stalking from a pavilion to the camper where Michael lay.

She would eventually call 911 over concern about his blood pressure level, and they would go to Mat-Su Regional Medical Center that evening.

Morning chaos

The couple awoke about 9:30 a.m. on May 19 to a smoke-filled house along Timberline Circle, Williford said. At first, the couple didn’t understand what was happening. They had both been taking prescribed pain medication, and officials believe they may have been sleeping in the smoke from the house fire for some time before they woke up.

“I smelled plastic burning, and said, ‘Honey, the neighbor must be burning garbage. Close the window,’” she said.

Michael thought a high-pitched sound he was hearing might be either a smoke alarm or the family dogs, Audrey said. When they stood up, the smoke was so thick they couldn’t say anything about it to each other. She said they crawled out of the bedroom, down the stairs, and tried to turn on some lights.

“When we got to the dining room, we started flipping on lights, and there were just no lights,” she said.

Michael shoved open the front door so they could see, and Audrey reached for the house phone, which was dead. She managed to find her cell phone near the house’s front door and call a neighbor. That’s when she realized the house was on fire.

Audrey rushed the family dog, Nick, to the van, then returned to the burning house, because Michael was still inside. She went back into the house, went to the dryer and dug out clothing for them both to wear, and then they began to leave on hands and knees.

“On the way out, I’m crawling around on the kitchen floor going ‘Where in the (expletive) is my fire extinguisher?’” she said. “I am totally Looney Tunes by then, apparently, and he (Michael) is screaming at me ‘Get out! Get out!’”

Even with her husband and neighbors and friends yelling for her to get out, Audrey still grabbed one thing to go.

“There’s a pie pan,” she said. “It had the keys to two of the cars, and it had my wallet and his wallet, and apparently a DeWalt drill and a measuring tape. I just picked up the whole pan and ran out and threw it on the ground.”

Audrey ended up outside in a mismatched outfit, barefoot, covered in soot, watching the fire spread.

“Everything’s gone,” she said. “I’m not able to cry because I’m still in shock waitin’ on somebody to show up.”

Given the situation, the neighbors called 911, Williford said.

But the answer they got, she said, was not encouraging.

“Somebody called,” she said. “Fire department says, ‘They’re out of the service area, sorry.”

Forty-five minutes later, the house Michael and Audrey had built together over the course of about 17 years collapsed. The house would ultimately smolder for about five days, and thousands of dollars of personal property, keepsakes, and mementos were lost. Audrey said she’s still not sure what caused the fire.

Alaska Division of Forestry officials showed up to assess the threat to the surrounding wild lands, but ultimately determined the fire would not spread. Troopers came to evaluate a situation with a neighbor. Mat-Su borough firefighters never showed up, Audrey said. The nearest fire station is less than 10 miles away.

Things went from bad to worse, Williford said, when four days later someone stole a large generator and tools from the property.

Invisible lines

In the Mat-Su Borough, populated areas generally fall into districts where officials assess extra property taxes to provide funding for local fire departments. If property falls inside the bounds of a fire service area and it catches on fire, firefighters must respond. However, if someone lives outside the fire service area, firefighters will only respond under certain conditions, said Department of Emergency Services director Bill Gamble.

“In general practice, we don’t respond to fires outside of the FSA, unless requested to do so by Forestry,” he said.

Fire chiefs can also order a response if it appears the fire will damage property inside the Fire Service Area or if someone’s life is threatened, Gamble said. However, the lack of a response outside the FSAs for property damage is about fairness, Gamble said.

“We have fire service areas, they have geographic and political boundaries,” he said. “It’s not fair to the people that are paying FSA taxes to provide a service outside those boundaries.”

Individual property owners adjacent to existing FSA’s can request their property be included in an FSA by assembly vote, Gamble said. Larger sections with multiple property owners can be added only if 51 percent of the property owners in an area vote for the property to be included, a process that starts with obtaining a petition form from the borough clerk’s office.

Fire officials have pushed for years for the growing areas west of Burma Road — where the Williford property is located — to be annexed into the West Lakes FSA, Gamble said. Those efforts are limited in part because fire officials can’t push the matter themselves, but must rely on property owners to seek entry into FSA’s, Gamble said. About 70 area percent of property owners rejected the last such attempt, Gamble said.

Firefighters regret being unable to help, Gamble said.

“It goes against everything in our nature not to do something to help,” he said.

Fire officials don’t know how many people live outside of Fire Service Area coverage, Gamble said.

Williford is familiar with FSAs. In the late 1980s, a house fire destroyed an uninsured residence she lived in at the same property. Firefighters also did not respond then. It was something of a rude education about FSAs.

“I really ate that one,” she said.

The property changed hands after Audrey divorced her first husband. He didn’t maintain the property tax bill, she said, and she said she bought the property out of foreclosure in 1999. South Big Lake Road was recently improved, and Williford said she assumed firefighters would respond down the road to rescue her house if anything happened. That assumption, and the fire, may have cost her the house.

“I assumed that we had fire protection, I didn’t know,” she said. “Or I probably would have put sprinklers in my house then. The new house? It will have a sprinkler system.”

Homeowners insurance will sometimes refuse to insure areas without fire protection, but the Willifords obtained mortgage insurance instead. The mortgage was paid off, but Audrey hadn’t gotten around to changing the policy when the fire struck. The mortgage insurance policy will pay out about $10,000, once the cause of the fire has been determined, Audrey said.

Her family has set up a GoFundMe account at https://www.gofundme.com/25b2evt8, and they’re working to get a bank account set up in their name at Alaska USA Credit Union. She’s anticipating going back to work, though osteoporosis and past injuries may make that difficult. The family’s goal is to have a new place to live by the time the snow flies.

In the meantime, Williford says she’s willing to do whatever it takes to extend fire coverage to her neck of the woods.

“I will be sitting down there with a petition,” she said.

Contact reporter Brian O’Connor at 352-2270, brian.oconnor@frontiersman.com, or on Twitter @reporterbriano.