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Trash in home hinders firefighters
By KELLEY BENHAM TARPON SPRINGS -- She built the house just the way she wanted it. She set out a couple of plants and propped a white ceramic angel high atop the entertainment center. But when firefighters tore down the front door Thursday to put out a kitchen fire, they could not reach the kitchen, or even identify it. The last evidence of the nice house Joanne and Emmanuel Williams built eight years ago was that little angel, dingy now, just visible over a stinking mountain of trash. Firefighters noticed nothing unusual about the white wood frame house at 415 E Oakwood St. when they arrived about 2 p.m. -- just a raggedy yard and a leaning mailbox, and smoke seeping from an octagonal louvered front vent. But when they tried to get inside, the door would not move. They tore it off and tossed it in the yard. In smoke and darkness, they could not see what blocked their way. They tried the side door, and could not penetrate the kitchen either. There must be a back door, they reasoned. There was not. They broke through the wall at the side of the house and hit cabinets and more trash. They gave up and decided to battle the fire from the outside in. Tarpon Springs firefighters put out the fire in about 20 minutes, but spent 10 trying to reach it. When the smoke cleared and the fire was out, they could see the garbage. Piles and piles of cereal boxes, sheets, laundry, bottles, boxes, shoes, luggage, newspapers, plastic tubs, empty bleach bottles, beer cans and plain old trash -- 4 feet high where the dining room was buried. At least 5 feet high in the living room, knee-high in the hallways. Roaches scurried up the walls. Flies darted in the haze. Somewhere, a phone rang and rang. "This is the worst I've seen in 20 years," said interim Fire Chief Kevin Bowman, sweating through his shirt in the heat. No one was home when the fire started, he said. If anyone had been, they would have been difficult to find. There was little damage to the outside of the house except for broken windows and holes the firefighters hacked in the walls and roof. Inside, the ceiling and walls were black in the kitchen and living room and insulation hung from the ceiling. The fire department was not able to estimate the damage. Joanne Williams, 51, was at work driving a school bus when she heard about the fire. She arrived after it was out, and stared at her house, stunned. She cried. She did not go inside. Her sister helped her into a folding chair in the shade, and wiped her brow. She and her husband, Emmanuel, a nurse, have not lived at the house in more than a year, she said. They have been staying nearby with her mother, who has been sick. Joanne had a hip replaced recently, and it still bothers her, she said. Emmanuel, 54, stayed at the house about a month ago and watched a football game, he said. Joanne Williams could not say how the trash piled up. She just looked at the ground. "I kept trying to come around and do a little something when I could," she said. The fire investigator told her how the fire started -- an orange extension cord, crimped between a table and the wall, shorted and sparked. It got hot enough to melt an aluminum cake pan in half: at least 1,100 degrees. The trash in the house was fuel for the fire, Tarpon Springs police Detective Allen MacKenzie told Mrs. Williams. She just shook her head. Her father, Willie C. Smith, 72, leaned on an umbrella nearby and wiped his forehead. "She's a collector, all right," he said of his oldest daughter. She loves garage sales and bargains, he said. "Had it cleaned up once, but I don't know what happened." Code enforcement officers will probably condemn the house, MacKenzie told Mrs. Williams. She nodded. She has insurance, she said, and family to help her, but does not know what she will do with the house now or how she will clean it out. "I can't even think about it right now," Mrs. Williams said. Mr. Smith remembers the house when his daughter built it. Couches in the living room. A dining room table with matching chairs. Three bedrooms. Two baths. A picture of a sunset propped against the living room wall. "Oh yes, it was real nice," Smith said. "This was a real nice house."
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From the Times North Pinellas desks Letters |
