| Resident tries to burn cardboard box, destroys neighboring trailer instead |
By: Darrell Todd Maurina
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Posted: Monday, March 8, 2010 11:41 pm
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Almost nothing but a metal frame remains of a mobile home destroyed Monday by an out-of-control trash fire.
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SAINT ROBERT, Mo. (March 8, 2010) — Dry weather, wind, and momentary inattention led to an out-of-control fire that destroyed a vacant mobile home Monday evening.
Waynesville and St. Robert firefighters responded to a blaze about 4 p.m. on Hamlet Lane, which is about two miles north of St. Robert off Highway 28, and found a mobile home fully involved in a swiftly moving natural cover fire.
Waynesville Deputy Fire Chief Andy Baker said he hasn’t yet been able to determine who owns the mobile home, but the person who started the fire wasn’t the owner but rather a neighbor living on adjacent property.
“They were burning a cardboard box and then he walked away, turned around, and saw the wind had taken it into the brush and then into the empty mobile home,” Baker said.
That resulted in nearly an hour and a half of work for two departments, plus a call to Tri-County Rural Fire Protection District personnel from Richland to provide backup coverage at the main Waynesville station.
Baker said incidents such as what happened Monday night shouldn’t happen.
“The wind was fast and (the fire) was moving swift,” Baker said. “When it’s windy, don’t burn. We have a burn ban right now in the Waynesville fire district, and all people need to do is call our station at 774-5449 and we would have told them that. This is one of the reasons we have the burn permits in place.”
The trailer was a total loss but nothing was inside, Baker said.
Eight Waynesville firefighters responded with a brush truck, engine and tanker; four St. Robert firefighters responded with an engine and a tanker. Pulaski County Ambulance District personnel responded for standby but no one was injured in the blaze, Baker said.
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