Fire destroys home on East End

• Unattended candle reportedly sets house ablaze

By Sean Pearson
Homer Tribune

A Homer family lost virtually everything they own to a Monday-evening fire that tore through their house on East End Road.
Firefighters from Kachemak Emergency Services Area, the Homer Volunteer Fire Department and the Anchor Point Fire Department combined forces to combat the fire that was fully involved when firefighters arrived on scene around 5:45 p.m.
Little remains today of the home of Robert and Brandy Carroll and their two young children after a candle reportedly left burning in the bathroom caught curtains ablaze and sent flames shooting through the roof of the large wooden structure.
KESA Fire Chief Robert Cicciarella said he was surprised at how much fire had already spread throughout the house prior to their arrival.
“The center of the structure was heavily involved and fire was already beginning to vent through the roof when we arrived,” Cicciarella said. “It was fairly surprising to see just how involved the fire was when we arrived. I’m not sure why no one really noticed it burning earlier.”
Cicciarella said he was unable to confirm whether the candle was the cause of the fire, adding that it is “still under investigation.” He added that there were, “a lot of explosions going off at the house” when crews first arrived.
“We had fuel tanks venting everywhere, and one tank blew its cap off and began spraying burning fuel on the front of the house like a flamethrower,” Cicciarella said. “And then multiple propane tanks started going off, and a 55-gallon drum of some kind of fuel exploded and flew some 30 feet in the air.”
Rounds of live ammunition also made it difficult for firefighters to advance on the fire.
“Bob told me when they first arrived on scene, there were live rounds of ammo cooking off all over the place,” said Homer Chief Bob Painter. “Some of those rounds were chambered, and that can be a very dangerous situation for firefighters to walk into.”
Painter said when HVFD received the call for mutual aid from KESA, his department responded with approximately 18 personnel, including 12 Firefighter I students in training.
“The students were supposed to be working with hoses and hose lines in class, so this was really just perfect timing for us,” Painter said. “We just took them out to the fire, and they got plenty of practice in there.”
Cicciarella said the large number of responders helped to keep the fire from spreading in the heavily wooded area.
“KESA had about 16 responders, and we got a lot of help from Homer folks,” he explained. “It was great to get the class of recruits out there, too. It gave them a chance to get some hands-on experience, do some exterior attack and clean-up.”
Cicciarella indicated some trouble with accessing sufficient water supply and pressure at the scene, noting that local companies like Waterworks and QuickDraw helped by filling up at McNeil and transporting water to the scene.
“Really, the biggest issue we had was just getting access to the structure via the single-lane road,” Cicciarella said. “HVFD did a great job of setting up a water shuttle system with Tanker 2, so we were able to set up a staging area on the southeast corner of the lot.”
Cicciarella called the house, “a total loss,” and the fire reportedly destroyed another structure on the property, as well as cars in the family’s garage. The family cat also perished in the fire.
“One of my first firefighters to arrive on scene immediately ran over and pulled the family’s flatbed truck and excavator away from the house so they wouldn’t burn,” Cicciarella said. “There wasn’t much left, but he went right to them and said, ‘There’s at least something we can save here.”

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Posted by Newsroom on Oct 14th, 2009 and filed under Headline News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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