Fire razes Hot Springs home

HOT SPRINGS — A fire that destroyed a more than 8,000-square-foot home on Lake Hamilton on Monday appeared to start in the attic, and it took 32 firefighters from four different departments more than six hours to fully extinguish it, 70 West Fire Department Fire Chief Autumn Carlisle said Tuesday.

The possibility of the fire at 654 Springwood Road spreading to nearby homes on Springwood Loop led to the evacuation of two homes, Carlisle said. Several other people in the area were unable to leave their homes or get to their homes because the road was closed.

Volunteer firefighters were dispatched just before 3 p.m. to the unoccupied residence after a passer-by in a boat reported a structure fire. Carlisle said that when firefighters arrived, the attic over the center of the structure had flames emerging through the roof. Heavy black smoke was visible from as far away as the Airport Road bridge over Lake Hamilton.

Carlisle said she believes the fire originated in the attic, but the exact cause of the fire was still unknown Tuesday.

“It was a large open floor plan with a lot of wood, heavy timbers and some masonry. It had seven heat [and] air units and a commercial gas supply line to it,” Carlisle said in a news release, which said the structure, around 8,690 square feet, was under construction and “had been for several years.”

The 70 West Fire Department responded with three engines and a brush truck. Help was requested from other fire departments. Four firefighters responded from the Piney Fire Department, two from the Mountain Pine Fire Department, and three from the Lake Hamilton Fire Department, along with a tanker and a fireboat.

“There were several trees that grew through the roof around the structure,” and the “heavy fire load made the fire difficult for firefighters to fight,” the release said.

After it became obvious that the structure was a total loss, firefighters worked to prevent the fire from spreading, hosing down trees and the house next-door as a precaution, according to reports.

“There were reports from the public that there were two homes that burned. There was only one very large residence that burned, a neighboring home sustained very minor heat damage to some siding and some landscaping,” the release said.

Several explosions could be heard at the scene as the fire spread. Carlisle said Tuesday that the initial explosions were possibly from ammunition, and the larger secondary explosions were from several small camp stove propane cylinders. Firefighters located various sizes of portable propane cylinders after the fire, some of which had exploded.