Prentiss family escapes house fire

PRENTISS – A steel roof that trapped heat like a pot lid helped fire destroy a Park Street house Friday morning and leave five people homeless, firefighters said.

About 20 firefighters from Kingman, Lee and Springfield responded to the fire when the first 911 call came in at about 6:42 a.m., but the two-story wood frame house had flames pouring from both floors when the first Kingman firefighters arrived at about 7 a.m., Kingman Fire Chief John Moody said.

Lee and Springfield firefighters arrived shortly thereafter. The firefighters almost entirely drained a pool at the house but could do little to quell the blaze, Moody said.

“Pretty much what it boiled down to was surround and drown. The house was a total loss,” Moody said Friday. “The structure had a steel roof on it, so it heated like an oven. We couldn’t really get enough water up under there to do anything under it.”

The fire might have gotten a good start on the second floor because people living there at first mistook the smoke they smelled.

“We were downstairs in the living room getting the grandkids ready for school when we started smelling smoke,” said Eunice Coombs, who has lived in the house since September with her husband, Ron, and their three grandchildren. “We thought it was because I had turned on the furnace.”

Coombs was on the telephone with her son when she saw flames by the stairwell. She immediately got the children out of the house and called 911. Attempts to douse the flames with water from a faucet failed for lack of water pressure, she said.

Everyone, including the family cat, left safely. No firefighters were injured fighting the fire.

Moody had a volunteer driving an excavator raze the house’s remnants because the flames left the structure too unstable, he said.

The state Fire Marshal’s Office is investigating the cause of the blaze. No determination was immediately available Friday.

“We’re not dealing with it really good,” Coombs said of the fire. “It’s like we lost everything. There’s nothing saved – no memories, pictures, documents, furniture. It’s all like a part of your life is gone.”

The Coombs family, which has fire insurance, is staying at the Lincoln House Motel courtesy of the American Red Cross until Monday. The family members eventually will move into a friend’s house on Tucker Ridge Road in Webster as they ponder their next move, Coombs said.