Fire, believed to be of accidental origin, swept through the 700-square-foot structure quickly. The $50,000 building was listed as a total loss, as was the van parked outside.
Steve North, chief of the McLane Black Lake Fire Department, said there are important lessons to be learned from the house fire – lessons we believe are worth repeating in the hope of preventing future losses.
North said the first lesson has to do with the smoke detector.
“She was napping inside the home when the smoke detector woke her to the fact that there was a fire. If she had not had an operational smoke detector there very likely would have been a bad outcome,” North said.
The key word is operational.
“It’s not good enough to have a smoke detector,” Chief North said. “It must be in working order. We need to check our smoke detector batteries twice a year to make sure the detector is working.”
That’s lesson one.
Lesson two deals with the fact that the woman tried to extinguish the fire until the flames exploded in her face.
“We don’t want to discourage anyone from extinguishing a fire,” Chief North said. “But the fact is, fires spread very, very quickly. We don’t want people to get in a position where they might get hurt or cannot escape from the home.”
In this case, the woman was obviously in shock because when she left the home she sat in a nearby van, which subsequently was consumed by the fire. It was neighbors who got her out of harm’s way.
Lesson three, Chief North said, is making a timely call to fire dispatchers at 911.
“In this case, it was 10 to 12 minutes after discovery of the fire before the call was placed,” the fire chief said. “That gives the fire way too much headway.”
The lessons from the 57th Avenue Northwest fire are clear: Working smoke detectors save lives.
Make sure to get out of the house ahead of the fire.
Call 911 dispatchers immediately after the discovery of the fire.
That timely advice might just save lives.
