Residents evacuate by boat as fire destroys 4 Lake Hamilton homes
Buildings’ proximity contributes to blaze’s rapid spread
Some residents of Four Seasons Villa Resort had to be evacuated by private boat after a fire ripped through a row of town houses in the gated community, as other property owners tried in vain to use garden hoses to stem the inferno.
Four houses were destroyed, and three more have varying degrees of fire and smoke damage. No one was reported injured, officials said. Although the exact cause of the fire late Saturday night has yet to be determined, residents said they think it began under a car parked in the carport of one of the homes.
“I went through my screen porch area, that’s no longer there, dropped [the hose] over and tried to spray the house,” homeowner Monte Dilick said Sunday. “It was so intense; the wood was just like kindling. It just went up like it was nothing.”
Autumn Carlisle, chief of the 70 West Fire Department, said that although most of the residences in Four Seasons are vacation homes, at least two of the four that were destroyed were occupied by yearround residents. The resort includes boat docks and sun decks and is near Lake Hamilton and the Ouachita River in Garland County. The fire was on Kleinshore Road.
Carlisle said the blaze originated from a vehicle close to the first in a row of four town houses. Just before the start of the fire, Carlisle said, residents had seen people shooting off fireworks.
“They believed they heard the fireworks go off, they saw the back unit of their complex caught on fire, their vehicle caught on fire, and then they said that it rapidly started spreading to the adjacent structures,” she said.
to information furnished by Reinert. It took more than a year to finish the repairs because replacement parts had to be manufactured and were expensive.
When the train was put back in service, it shared time with the diesel-powered engine, the Creekmore Express, which the city acquired in the 1980s.
The steam train’s condition has deteriorated, and the train hasn’t run since June 29, 2016. The Creekmore Express diesel engine is currently the only train that runs a quarter-mile route at Creekmore Park.
City directors appeared to be leaning toward buying the electric train and using it as the primary train, having the diesel train as a backup and reserving the steam train, if it’s restored, for special occasions.
The city directors seemed reluctant to retire the steam train because of its long history in the city and the pleasant memories it has created over the years.
“When I was a kid, we would come up to Creekmore Park from Charleston and ride the train,” City Director Tracy Pennartz said at last week’s meeting. “It was a big deal.”
John Mankin of Checotah, Okla., formerly of Fort Smith, said that when he was a child, he used to hound his grandfather about taking him to Creekmore Park to ride the train.
“On a nice day, you could hear that whistle all over Park Hill,” he said.
Reinert said 37,000 passengers a year ride the train. The track is a quarter-mile long, and a ride is two laps. The three cars the diesel locomotive pulls can carry up to 30 people.
He said a ride costs 25 cents, but no one is turned away for not having the fare.
Newman, who is one of two drivers of the Creekmore Express, said between 400 and 500 people a day have been riding the train since he started the job three weeks ago.
Newman, a retired city electrical inspector, said he hesitates to call it a job because he enjoys driving the train so much. He said the train is easy to drive, and his biggest challenge is keeping children from hanging their feet off the car or placing sticks across the track.
As the train driver, “Out there, you are the good guy all the time,” he said.
Mankin said he plans to propose to city directors at the July 11 meeting that he form a nonprofit organization that would take over the trains at Creekmore Park. He said the nonprofit would raise the money to repair the steam train, take over diagnosing its problems and arrange for repairs to be made.
The organization would be in charge of operating, maintaining and repairing all the trains at Creekmore Park, he said, similar to operating a concession.
Ivy Owen, executive director of the Fort Chaffee Redevelopment Authority, also was interested in the steam train. He said that if city officials want to get rid of the train, he wants to acquire, repair and operate it in Chaffee Crossing’s historic district.
He also said he would offer Chaffee Crossing’s maintenance shop to help assess the repair needs or assist with repairs if the work is done locally.
The cost of restoring the train is unknown. Reinert told city directors that estimates of restoring the train have ranged from less than $20,000 to $100,000. He said there is no way of knowing how much it will cost until the train is taken apart and examined.