TOWER- Former Tower Fire Chief Rolando Noyes put his fire training to good use, Jan. 9, when the neighboring house caught fire shortly after 9 p.m.
“We heard a boom, looked out the window, and saw nothing but flames,” Noyes said.
“It was a big explosion, and the house was fully engulfed,” he said. The explosion blasted out windows on the side of the house facing Noyes’ residence.
Noyes’ 17-year-old son, Rogelio, quickly called 911 and then went to help 86-year-old Jim Anderson get out of his house safely. The two could see that Anderson was still inside, struggling to open a back door, where a cement slab under the door had frost-heaved just a week or so before the fire. Rogelio helped open the door and got his elderly neighbor to safety.
“That door was really hard to push,” Rolando said. “It was a pretty close call. All I saw was big flames, and I worried the trees between our houses would catch on fire.”
Rolando and Rogelio got Anderson into the safety of their heated garage, and then made calls to get a family member to come get him.
“I’d been at my dad’s house until 7 p.m. that night,” said Sherry Anderson, “and then another friend stopped to visit and stayed until 8 p.m.”
Sherry said her dad walks with a cane and is not steady on his feet. She was surprised he was able to get to the back door so quickly.
“And if it wasn’t for Rogelio,” she said. “He might not have gotten out.”
The house, near the corner of Birch and S. Third, is less than two blocks from the Tower Fire Hall, so responders were on the scene quickly, but getting an adequate water supply proved challenging.
Tower’s fire engine did not make it to the scene after responders were unable to start the vehicle, apparently due to a battery issue. The two responding members of the Tower Fire Department arrived at the scene in the department’s brush rig, which isn’t equipped to fight structure fires.
Breitung firefighters arrived soon after with a pumper and were able to use water in their tank to wet down Noyes’ house until the hydrant water supply was secured. The first hydrant they attempted to use was not working, and they ended up having to lay hose to get water from a different hydrant almost two blocks away.
“Once Breitung got the hydrant hooked up, everything went well,” said Noyes.
Anderson said when she got to the scene, her dad was standing behind the house, leaning on a garbage can. Someone had lent him a coat. He got out of the house with just the clothes he was wearing. Sherry said no one assessed her father at the scene, and she is worried he has lingering health effects from the explosion.
“He can hardly hear,” she said. “His vision is blurry, and he has really bad tinnitus.”
Jim’s truck, parked behind the house, had melted taillights and the hatch handle was melted. Sherry said they need to get a new key made for the truck before figuring out if it still can run.
“If that truck had blown up, it could have taken out the two neighboring houses,” she said.
The house was a total loss, and an excavator was brought in to aid in extinguishing the blaze. Firefighters were on scene well into the early morning hours getting the fire totally extinguished. The cause of the fire is not yet determined. Sherry said a fire examiner was scheduled to visit Tuesday. She said it appeared the oil tank was still intact in the remains of the basement.
The family has moved Jim into Vermilion Senior Living, but the shock of the fire and his inability to sleep since the incident is making the adjustment to a new living situation even harder.
“He has just aged years this past few days,” Sherry said of her father.
Anderson said she is concerned about the Tower Fire Department’s response to the fire, but was glad to see Breitung arrive as quickly as it did.
“Don’t pretend to have a fire department [in Tower] when you don’t,” she said. “Nobody had control of the situation.” She wondered if the city knew about non-working hydrants, and why they hadn’t been fixed.
Departments dispatched to the fire included Tower, Breitung Township, Greenwood Township, Embarrass, Ely, Eagles Nest, Vermilion Lake, and Pike-Sandy-Britt. The Tower Ambulance Service provided medical standby at the scene.