Was out photographing the fall foliage the other day after it finally stopped raining Thursday morning, and my pager activated and we were kicked out to a house fire a few miles north of where I was shooting the leaves. I jumped in my truck and took off down some side roads to get to where I the house was located. The county dispatcher gave our responding trucks different directions than the way I was headed, but due to my knowledge of backroads and delivery driving experience for many years, as well as knowing my fire district well, I knew my route would take me there well ahead of their response time. As I was driving down the roads, I looked in the direction of the call and saw a large plume of heavy black smoke, and called the county dispatcher to let them know as well. I arrived on the scene a few minutes later, the residence owner wasnt home, they were out furniture shopping I was told by a neighbor who called it in, and I called the county dispatcher back to let them know I was on scene and the double wide mobile home was eighty percent involved with heavy fire with no other buildings close. I asked him to get the rural electric coop en route due to a transformer close to the fire and wires very close to the fire as well, which were dripping and burning from the radiant heat. An ambulance crew arrived and right after that, the homeowners arrived and the wife collapsed at the entrance to the driveway and we had to assist her off to the side before the trucks arrived.

One of our deputy chiefs arrived a few minutes later and we held traffic until the local deputies arrived, and then a few minutes after that the fire trucks started rolling in. From the time I arrived to the time the trucks arrived was probably seven long minutes and the home was totally consumed by heavy fire leaving firefighters nothing to do except to douse the flames and hopefully retain something for the investigators to sift through to determine the cause of the fire. All photographs are copyrighted.