Family home reduced to ashes
<p>Firefighters battle flames in a fully involved structure fire on Thursday afternoon, May 14, on Brunner Road southwest of Columbia Falls. (Brenda Ahearn/Daily Inter Lake)</p>
Stan Ortel stood next to his family’s home Thursday evening, pausing for a minute to look at the house that still was belching smoke.
A fire took out Ortel’s garage and spread to the house, leaving a total loss for Ortel’s Brunner Road property southwest of Columbia Falls.
The family moved into the home about 15 years ago.
“You raise your kids in a house and everything,” Ortel said at the scene, his voice trailing off. “It’s just sad.”
The fire call came in shortly after 5:30 p.m.
Jonathan Glode, an immediate neighbor of Ortel’s, said he heard a few pops followed by a large explosion. He went outside and saw the garage engulfed in flames.
Glode said that his girlfriend called Ortel, who called the fire department.
“I got a phone call from my neighbor,” Ortel said. “They said the house was on fire.”
Ortel, who runs a business called Well Done Drilling, was in Coram when the fire started and other family members were away.
Columbia Falls Fire Chief Rich Hagen confirmed that somebody had been welding in the garage earlier that day. He said that it would be tough to determine an exact cause, given the destruction of the garage. But the welding equipment was a likely heat source.
“The point of origin, we pretty much determined, was the area where the cutting and welding was taking place,” Hagen said.
By the time Ortel arrived, the garage had burned to the ground. Firefighters turned their attention to the house, which was falling away from the inside. In the end, it had been burned wholly through.
The Ortels had two dogs in the house. One of them escaped the fire. Another, which was in an upstairs bedroom, is believed to be dead.
Fire crews remained on the scene until shortly before 11 p.m. to extinguish hot spots. The Columbia Falls, Evergreen and West Valley fire departments battled the fire.
A GoFundMe page for Carol Ortel has raised $460 and can be found at www.gofundme.com/CarolOrtel.
Reporter Matt Hudson may be reached at 758-4459 or by email at mhudson@dailyinterlake.com.