Bad House Fire last week…

I was sleeping good and sound when the pager went off about 2:20 am last Wednesday morning and FC kicked out our main pumper to assist Bourbon on a residential structure fire, meaning a house on fire, south of Bourbon on Hwy N near the Meramac River…so I got up and started dressing, remembering it was very cold outside and putting on layers of clothes. Bourbon doesnt always call us, just on first alarms like this and major accidents, so I figured as far out as it was, it would prob be something major and I might be there awhile. I heard the pumper crew go enroute and Missy was already waiting for me at the door…so I grabbed my camera and flash attachment and out we went to the truck. Luckily my truck warms up pretty quickly, and it was very cold out, temps prob hovering around zero, and luckily still, not much wind. As we started down the street, I heard radio traffic asking about a tanker so I knew then it must be a pretty bad fire if they were already calling for water. We got to Bourbon and turned south on Hwy N and I saw what I figured was their tanker`s water trail crossing the railroad tracks and continuing south and as we headed out of town, snowflakes started falling fairly heavy.

The Meramac River bridge is about seven miles south of Bourbon and you go up a big hill and then down that big hill to the Meramac Valley below and bridge as well, a route I know too well from photo shoot locations and rock hunting too…as we started up the hill, you could see a large glow in the distance, and I had an idea of where the fire was located…and as we started down to the bridge in the valley below, my suspicions were slowly working their way to confirmation.

We crossed the river bridge and went around a curve passing first Hinch Road and then Thickety Ford Road, and started up a small hill and came upon one of Bourbons firefighters, who was pulled off the side of the road on the right of way, which was solid ice by then, and pulling on his fire gear…I stopped and asked Shannon if it would be okay to park on down in the roadway and he said sure, someone else had already done so anyway. I pulled on down behind the other pickup, moving over to the right as far as I could, activated my flashers, set the heat low for Missy, grabbed my camera and flash unit and headed up to the fire scene…stopping to shoot this photo as I did….

…and as I walked up on the driveway, my suspicions were confirmed…a beautiful two story log home that I had driven by and admired several times, was now fully engulfed in fire…I stopped and asked Brent, a good friend who is a firefighter and Bourbon Fire Command, if it was okay to photograph the scene and he gave me permission…

I started down the hill to the fire, the home located about two hundred feet down a hill off the highway, and could see and feel the drive was a sheet of ice and becoming very slick under my feet, so I headed off into the snow in the wooded area to the right of the road and continued safely down to the fire scene, seeing this….

..our firefighters assisting Bourbon`s firefighters in trying to get a handle on the massive flames and try to bring the fire under control…there is a deck off to the left side which surrounded the main living room of the home and there was a garage on the right side…I worked my way to the right around the garage end, where there was no more garage to be seen, and saw a large flatbed truck and heard some type of muffled explosions further thru the heavy smoke, so I walked up into the woods and went around the smoke cloud, coming out on the other side to find Sullivan firefighter Davy Sumpter working a handline on the fire in the back of the garage area…

…I lit him up with the flash and discovered it had started snowing again…flurries coming down that quickly became heavy….Davey was cooling down a propane tank as well as trying to figure out what was under a pile of sheet tin that kept exploding…turned out to be a Volkswagon Beetle, the engines are made of magnesium and they react with water to explode…I walked back around to the front of the house to use my flash some more…

…and shows the spaghetti hose lines as firefighters wade in and hit the flames…

..but the silhouettes looked better due to the snow falling….

..showing the heavy volume of fire that firefighters had to contend with from one side to the other of the massive home…I walked around to the back of the house to get a better perspective of the size of the house and fire…found Davey moving the tin from around the VW Beetle…so he could better access the fire…

..and by this time more firefighters were arriving on scene and coming down the hillside to assist with attack lines…another hoseline was laid out and firefighters moved to the back of the house as I moved around it as well…