On Friday January 20th, we responded to a single-family home for a reported fire in a garage attached to the home. The residents were home at the time of the fire and called 911. The husband was asleep on the coach, just steps away from the breezeway that led to the door into the garage, when he suddenly woke up and smelled smoke. He immediately yelled for his wife who was asleep in the bedroom to wake-up because there was a fire. The two of them and their dog safely evacuated the home while calling 911.
Sagamore Hills police officers were first on scene and reported that the entire garage, and a couple of vehicles in front of the garage were fully involved with fire. The fire departments officer in charge arrived soon after and established command. He met with the residents and confirmed that everyone was
out of the home and began a defensive fire attack. The officer in charge faced unique challenges with this fire. The home is owned by the National Park system and is in a rural area of Sagamore Hills and sits atop a hill that is approximately 800 feet off Valley View Road and has no fire hydrants in the area. He immediately mutual aided water tankers from surrounding fire departments that could supply our engines with water.
The Ohio State Fire Marshalls office was on site on Monday, January 23 and has not given us a fire cause or ruling as of this time. Both the Fire Marshall and our Fire Prevention Bureau feel that the fire possibly started in the garage. We estimate the property damage to be 170,00 to 230.000 thousand dollars.
The call came into our department at 23:04, and we were on scene at 23:06. Our department responded to the incident with a command vehicle, three engines, a ladder, and the Chief’s car. Our department responded with a total of twelve firefighters, Auto aid was received by Northfield Village Fire
for an engine, mutual aid from Valley View Fire for an ambulance, water tankers from Valley Fire District, Valley View and Hudson. The number of firefighters at the scene totaled 23. We are reporting that one firefighter became ill during operations, and was removed from active service, but did not require further treatment or transport.
