Blaze destroys home

GARWOOD

Two injured, one flown to Level 1 trauma center

A Garwood fire that occurred on August 3 claimed the home of the residents, leaving two injured with one of the injured being flown to a nearby Level 1 trauma center.

At 7:20 a.m., the Garwood Volunteer Fire Department got a call about a structure fire on the only home located on County Road 114.

Garwood VFD Fire Chief Todd Krenek says the location of the fire was a good way out of town, and immediately paged other nearby departments to assist with the flame.

“It’s a pretty good way out of town,” said Krenek. “Immediately when we get a structure fire type call, especially when we know we got a long time to get there, we automatically page nearby fire department services. So, we work hand in hand with them very closely.”

Krenek says he had assistant fire chief Jody Meisner close to the scene of the blaze and was able to assess the situation before arriving himself. The fire chief chose to ask Colorado County Emergency Management Services to assist on the scene with any injuries due to the severity of the fire.

“1703, which is my, one of my assistant chiefs, Jody Meisner,” sa id Krenek. “He went directly there, and he said we have smoke showing. So, we knew we had a true structure fire. We were aware that it could be possibility that there were injuries on scene. We had no idea what they were. I took our medic along and asked the county to bring theirs, because when we are busy firefighting, it is hard to do both sometimes.”

When Krenek arrived on scene, he noted how the fire was already pushing outside of the house. Fortunately, the homeowners were all out by that time according to Krenek, allowing the firefighters to tame the fire quickly, but the damage had already been done and the property could be too far gone to save.

“I got on scene about the same time as our pumper,” said Krenek. “We had fire coming out of the home. We learned that all homeowners were out of the house. Me and one of the other medics attended to the homeowners. They needed our assistance, and so the rest of the people, as they got there, put water on the fire and it did not take long from there to extinguish. We got the fire down really quick, minimized more damage, but due to the fire, smoke and water damage, there was really not a lot left after we got the fire out. We did have some brush trucks come out also, only because the firefighters use them to get to the scene.”

For this case, Krenek says Garwood VFD paged the Eagle Lake VFD, Rock Island VFD, Colorado County EMS and Colorado County Sheriff’s Office to assist Garwood with the fire and any injuries. The entities come together to help each other in times of need, according to the fire chief, and this instance was no different.

“Three from Colorado County showed up, at which point they and one of my other medics took care of the patients,” said Krenek. “Eagle Lake brought us manpower. I did not know we had their chief and their first assistant chief there fighting fire with us, bunkered out in air packs. They brought us water as far as for firefighting, and they brought the rescue truck, which is what we refill our air packs with. Rock Island Fire Department did bring a tanker to provide water for us for fighting the fire, and then we utilized our pumper tanker.”

Colorado County EMS according to Krenek did decide that one of the injured needed to fly. He says the entities set up a landing zone out of Columbus PHI to come and transport the severely injured. The other resident at the time only had minor injuries and chose not to go to a hospital.

Krenek says that the flames started in “about” the middle of the house. He says by the time they realized the house was ablaze, the exit was already up in smoke.

“The fire started in about the middle of the house and moved toward the north,” says Krenek. “But the heat and what have you melted everything in the south of the house. As they moved to the north side, the homeowners said they heard something crackling. They jumped up. They realized the house on fire had already compromised the exit. So, they shattered a window to get out of the house.”

The fire chief feels confident that the fire was an accident due to the evidence on scene, and decided there was no further action to be taken. Krenek says there was nothing to show malicious intent, and that the blaze was truly just a bizarre accident.