Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Volunteer recounts night of fire at her home
BELLA VISTA — Dorothy Miller is sure that someone is looking after her.
An active volunteer in her 70s, Miller said she had a feeling she should not go home one night in late December — a feeling that probably saved her life.
One of her many volunteer projects is with the cemetery preservation group, and she shares it with her friend Bill Degge. She’s helped Degge publish several books about Benton County residents who served in the Confederate Army. They also clean gravestones in many of the tiny cemeteries around Benton County.
On that night in late December, Degge decided to go home early and he went to his Rogers home instead of spending the night with Miller in Bella Vista.
When she found herself alone without anything pressing to do, Miller decided to visit a casino. She said casinos provide needed stress relief and a break from her busy schedule. She was by herself when she pulled into her driveway and opened the garage door around 11 p.m.
She immediately saw a small fire in the garage, she said. At first, it seemed to be a single chair that was on fire, so she called 911 and followed the dispatcher’s instructions. She said she entered the house through the front door to wake up her adult son. The smoke was already thick inside the house, so she called out to him, made sure he was awake and went back outside.
Unfortunately, her son exited the house through the kitchen, opening the door between the house and the garage. When he opened the door, it created a draft, and the fire expanded. He left the door open, so it allowed even more smoke inside the house.
“The fire trucks got there as soon as he walked out of the garage,” she wrote in an email. “I yelled for him to get away as the gas can and my trailer was sitting right outside the garage door with our baling wire on it. I can’t believe how the wire melted on the trailer but when the tire blew out it blew the gas can and it went all over the garage and set the whole thing on fire as the firemen were hooking up the hoses. They did a great job but it burned the garage door and contents so fast I was amazed.”
Later, the firefighters told her that if she had been asleep in the house, the smoke probably would have killed her before the fire woke her up.
Although she lost the contents of her garage, it could have been much worse. She had just returned boxes of historic documents to the Bentonville Library, she said. She had spent most of the pandemic working on those files at home. Many photos were destroyed, but many of those were also saved electronically on her phone.
Most of what was inside the house is salvageable, she said, although there was a lot of smoke damage, and some major repairs will be needed before she can move back in.
There were lots of other documents in file cabinets in the garage, but she had already gone through them and found the most important information, she said.
There were tubs of books and other documents that belonged to former Benton County Judge Cary Anderson, who first recruited Miller to help with historic preservation. Those were lost too.
There was also a quilt frame that she used to show her Civil War quilt, but only the frame was lost. The quilt itself is safe, she said.
She lost a lot of tools in the garage. Many of the tools were used when she got volunteers or jail work details to help in the cemeteries. Other tools belonged to her late husband, and she said she’s sorry to have lost those.
The worst thing, she said, was losing her deep sea fishing equipment. She loves deep sea fishing.