A Petersburg home was destroyed in a fire on Jan. 13.
Just after noon, Petersburg’s volunteer fire department, police and Alaska State Troopers responded to the residential fire — located about two miles out of town along Frederick Point Drive.
Petersburg’s Fire Chief Dan Bird said the house was “completely engulfed in flames” when firefighters arrived on scene.
No one was home at the time of the fire; neighbors said the owners are on vacation.
The fire was contained by midafternoon.
“It’s under control,” Bird told KFSK at the scene around 2:20 p.m. “We’re just trying to extinguish the remaining hotspots that are burning, and we’ll still probably be here for a couple hours, trying to make that happen.”
The borough brought in a backhoe to move collapsed walls so that firefighters could put out the remaining embers.
A fire hydrant across the street from the residence supplied water to douse the house uphill. Bird said that the rain helped protect the surrounding area from burning up as well.
“The intensity of that much volume of structure that was burning at one time, you know, luckily we had a lot of rain previously, so everything’s really wet so none of the trees around the house caught fire,” Bird said. “It didn’t spread to any of the forest around the house.”
However, the weather also complicated the situation. Bird said the firefighters were not just battling flames, but intense wind.
“It was gusting, probably 40 [mph] when we got here,” he said. “ That made it a little bit more challenging.”
The blaze destroyed two vehicles, along with the house.
The fire department completely extinguished the fire and left the scene just after 5 p.m.
The cause of the fire is still under investigation.
Jan. 14 update: A donations account has been set up for the homeowners at Lee’s Clothing. Donations can be made by calling Lee’s at (907)772-4229, or at the storefront in downtown Petersburg.
This is a developing story.
