Fire guts home

A couple lost their belongings and a dog in a Grass Valley house fire Tuesday that could have been much worse if it had spread into neighboring woods.

Renter Todd Carroll, 43, said he had cleared around his home at the end of Leahy Road in a wooded area above downtown Grass Valley to help stop wildfire. Carroll said it didn't help stop the blaze that gutted the home he lived in, but it did stop it from spreading into the neighborhood on Washington Hill.

The fire is under investigation, according to Grass Valley Fire Department Battalion Chief David Ray. He said a fireman driving on West Main Street below the 109 Leahy Road site saw the smoke and called it in.

"I was coming home on Main Street and saw the smoke," said Angela Carroll, 36, Todd Carroll's wife. She knew the position of her house hidden by the wooded hill and feared the worst.

Next door neighbor Ken Svenson was trimming his rose bushes when he heard someone yell out "Carl, Carl," a few minutes before the fire. Svenson said the Carroll's dogs were not barking at the person who said it, which he found odd because they always bark at people who walk by in the woods.

A few minutes later, Svenson saw flames on the porch at the back end of the house. "And then I saw it go up the logs and ignite the roof," Svenson said. "It kept coming back up at that hot spot."

Svenson shot a garden hose on the fire the best he could but it soon engulfed the back end of the home and was like that when fire fighters arrived about 1:30 p.m.

Two of them were taken to Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital, where one was treated and released and another admitted for heat-induced illness. Their names were unavailable, and no one else was hurt.

"The tree behind the house caught fire four times," Svenson said. "Good thing it was thinned out in the area or that (fire) could have gone up the street and we would have had a flaming mess."

Angela Carroll said she wanted to go back in the home to look for her jewelry about 4:30 p.m. But Ray couldn't let her because the floor had been burned away and the remains were too unstable to work on. The fire gutted the inside supports of the home, which caused the roof to partially collapse.

Mr. Carroll said they lost, "everything and one dog." Although fire fighters were salvaging some personal items, the Carroll said they did not amount to much.

Neither had any idea of what they would do after the blaze or what caused it.

"I guess we'll start over," Mr. Carroll said. "What else can we do?"

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To contact senior staff writer Dave Moller, e-mail davem@the union.com or call 477-4231.