For the week of  September 12 - 18, 2001

Fire destroys Warm Springs condo

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By GREG MOORE
Express Staff Writer

A four-unit Warm Springs condominium complex was destroyed by fire last Wednesday after an oily rag left on a wood deck spontaneously ignited.

No one was hurt in the blaze.

Ketchum Fire Department firefighters douse flames that gutted a four-unit Warm Springs condominium complex last Wednesday. Express photo by Willy Cook

Ketchum Fire Chief Tom Johnson said his department responded to the call at Warm Springs Villa condominiums, 210 Ski Way, at 4:40 p.m. He said 25 firefighters, including Sun Valley Fire Department personnel, had the fire contained in about 45 minutes.

"The fire had gained such headway that we had to use a very heavy water stream on it," Johnson said.

Johnson said his main concern was keeping the blaze from spreading to nearby buildings or the tinder-dry grass and sagebrush. He said hose streams directed on the units behind the burning building, aided by a flame-resistant roof, kept the fire from spreading there.

"Had it been a wood-shingle roof, I’m sure the results would have been different," Johnson said.

He said the fire was spotted by neighbors Curtis Bacca and John Leonardo, who had smelled the smoke and then knocked on the building’s doors to alert people. The only occupant home was Jennifer Kriesien, in unit four, who had also smelled the smoke and fled the building with her dog.

"A lot of smoke came rushing by the windows upstairs and she looked outside and units one and two were ablaze," said her husband, Brian Kriesien.

He said that by the time he arrived, seven minutes after the firefighters had, the fire had spread though most of the two-story log building. He said that neither he nor his wife had an opportunity to go back in to retrieve belongings.

Watching the fire, Brian Kriesien said, "I was just kind of in utter awe."

"But we’re OK. Nobody got hurt—that’s the main thing."

He said friends have been very generous, offering housing, clothes and money.

"It just seems trivial compared to the catastrophe at hand [in New York}," he said. "That puts into perspective the problems I have."

The fire was the second this summer to be started by spontaneous combustion of oily rags. Johnson said such an event is likely to occur when wet mineral or linseed oil is left on a cotton rag. He said anyone using such rags should deposit them in a metal container with a lid and raised bottom, such as used for hot ashes.

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