Fire destroys family home

Despite valiant efforts from firefighters, a family home just outside Sundance was lost to a chimney fire just before Christmas.

Eight members of the city's volunteer fire department, along with their counterparts from around the county and beyond, spent almost 24 hours battling to save the structure, but were thwarted by the elements and the sturdy construction of the roof.

"We got the call on December 18 at about 9 a.m. of a chimney fire," says Fire Chief Gari Gill.

It had begun in a room with a wood stove and a high vaulted ceiling. After a team of eight Sundance firefighters arrived and made entry, a few climbed the ladder to tear off the flashing from the inside so they could get to it.

This did enable them to put the fire out in the room, but there was bad news ahead.

"When I went outside and did a walkaround, we had smoke coming out the eaves," Gill says.

"We immediately started trying to open up the roof so we could get to it, but the construction was tough. It was tongue-and-groove on the inside, then two inches of Styrofoam™ on top of that, then a two-inch dead air space, then another two inches of insulation on OSB."

Six firefighters tried their best to get through it, but the fire had already crept along the Styrofoam and spread across the entire roof.

"Pretty soon, the roof got to a point where I wouldn't let anybody back on it," he says.

Conditions for the volunteers were unpleasant from the start.

"The house was thick in smoke when we got there. We ventilated it out enough to where we could get up in there," he says.

Even so, the smoke was bad enough that firefighters needed to use a breathing apparatus most of the time and were rotated out individually to rest and get some oxygen.

"The smoke was brown from that Styrofoam and it stank badly. We popped one piece of roof off and all four of us got a face-full," Gill says,

With the roof inaccessible, the team tried an interior attack where the fire had entered a bedroom, but to no avail.

"We put it out and five minutes later it flared back up – we couldn't get up into it because [the ceiling] was also tongue-and-groove pine with sheet rock underneath it," he says.

They could stop the fire from coming down, but they had no way to get up to the source. And as they continued with their efforts, the weather lent an unhelpful hand.

"The wind really came up and it just killed us. We couldn't keep up with it," Gill says.

Gill called in mutual aid from Pine Haven, Moorcroft and Weston County. Soon there were 26 firefighters on scene in a losing battle against the elements.

Due to the location, seven miles out of town off Hwy 585, it was necessary to fetch water from Sundance. Weston County brought two additional tenders, which helped.

Unfortunately, the wind had taken the fire entirely out of the control of the firefighters, Gill says. It quickly superheated and the whole house turned to flame.

"We tried to get some stuff out, but when that wind came up in was nobody in, nobody on the roof, everybody back," he says.

The good news is that no injuries were reported among the firefighters and the homeowner, who reported the fire, was unharmed.

"The ambulance got there right before us and got her out," Gill says.

"We're just heartbroken that we lost it, but there wasn't much we could do. Even if we'd have had all 26 guys there when it started, I don't think we'd have caught it because it was already up in the eaves – and then came that wind."