A man and his two dogs managed to escape their burning home on Lost Road in High Ridge unharmed on March 24.
The home and garage were significantly damaged in the fire, High Ridge Fire Chief John Barton said.
Firefighters arrived at the house in the late afternoon to find a fire engulfing the garage and spreading to the house. Officials ruled the cause of the fire as undetermined and accidental in nature, adding that it may have sparked from a fire started earlier in the day when the homeowner was burning dead leaves on the property.
“There was one adult male home at the time of the call,” Barton said. “He was watching TV in the front room of his home, and heard the smoke detectors going off, and then noticed smoke in his kitchen.
“It’s a reminder of the benefits of having working smoke detectors. If he didn't have working smoke detectors, it would be quite possible that he could have been overcome by smoke if he had noticed the fire too late in its progression.”
Barton said the man and his dogs did not require medical attention following the fire. The house is heavily damaged and is not currently habitable. Two cars parked in the garage, along with a third car parked near the house, were also heavily damaged in the fire.
“The cause of the fire is ruled as undetermined and accidental, but the fire investigators were not able to tell if the brush fire started first and caught the garage (on fire), or if there was actually a fire that started in the garage through something electrical, and that the brush was just caught as a secondary fire,” Barton said.
The brush fire spread to about half an acre before fire crews put it out, Barton said.
The Fenton, Saline Valley, Cedar Hill and Valley Park fire protection districts, along with the North Jefferson County Ambulance District, assisted on the call.
High Ridge Fire has put out 18 “outside fires,” including brush fires and fires started from people burning lawn waste or trash, in the last two weeks.
Now is a particularly poor time to burn dead leaves or waste, Barton said, because of the high winds and low humidity. He encouraged those intending to burn debris to call High Ridge Fire ahead of time at 636-677-3371.
“It’s warm outside, so people are going outside trying to clean up, but it’s also very low humidity, and coupled with winds that are gusting sometimes to over 20 miles an hour, it’s basically the perfect setup for brush fires,” Barton said. “Monitoring the weather is really the key. We always encourage people to call us if they’re going to burn yard waste or really anything in the district. If it’s a day where it’s dangerous conditions, we’ll tell them over the phone that we recommend they not burn, but if conditions are OK, it’s helpful for us to know where people are burning debris in our district.”
In partnership with the Red Cross, High Ridge Fire offers free smoke detectors for district residents. Barton said to call district headquarters for more information.
“(The smoke detectors) have 10-year batteries, and we install them for the residents,” Barton said. “We can also send them reminders fairly far down the road when it’s time to replace the batteries. We can reach out to them to follow up to make sure that they stay in working condition.”