New Year's Fire

Early on New Year's Day, we got an email from the Venture Out resort management alerting us that there had been a fire on one of the streets in the resort and encouraging us to stay away as long as the emergency equipment was there. We did, but decided later in the day to go see what had been damaged. The email indicated that two units had been damaged but that there were no injuries.

They have the two properties fenced off from access.

One property appears to be fully destroyed.

The other seems to have the park model destroyed, and though the Arizona room isn't totally destroyed, it probably is not salvageable.

Another view of the totally destroyed unit.

From what we've heard, grandchildren of a neighbor were staying as guests in one of the houses, and the fire started from the neighbor's electric blanket that a one of the children were using.

Just like a motorhome, fires destroy a park model very quickly -- and the units are so close together that it is actually a blessing that only the two units were involved. The unit next door to the house on the right also has siding that appears to have been bubbled by heat.

Last year, another unit burned on another street in the resort -- reportedly from a portable heater catching a curtain on fire. When we were in the Newcomers session at the beginning of December, one of the couples indicated that they were on "the lot where the unit burned last year" (I guess everyone knows what lot that is).

Many of the newer houses in the resort have been built onto the frame of a park model (they are required by the community bylaws to have "wheels" underneath them), but that's all that has any relation to a normal park model unit. I would guess that they may be a bit more fire resistant (stucco walls, not so much plastic in the construction), but I don't know for sure.

It is sobering for sure to contemplate this kind of disaster.