After a relatively quiet winter across the Peninsula, Central Emergency Services responded to a slew of events last weekend.
Safety Officer Brad Nelson…
Nelson: “Besides our routine medical calls that we do every day, we had a bunch of stuff this weekend. car accidents, trees on power lines, CO alarms, we had a chimney fire that we were able to contain just inside the chimney, but the major call this weekend was a residential fire Saturday night right around 8:15, 8:20. We got sent to a residence off Rabbit Run on Alaskan View. It was a two-story residence, report of a structure fire. Crews got there and we had heavy fire activity coming from the chimney out of the wood stove. It had crawled up the wall into the attic space and was threatening the rest of the structure.”
Nelson said the homeowners had evacuated before crews arrived.
Nelson: “Another five minutes and it was spreading and running through the attic and heating space to the living area where the bedrooms and kitchen and all the other stuff were. Another five minutes and it would have been a different story. It would have got through there. It’s a beautiful house, log cabin, with tongue-and-groove finishes. It’s hard to chase a fire through that stuff.”
Until now, CES had been reporting a relatively uneventful winter, as had Nikiski and Kenai emergency responders.
