Fire destroys Pablo home
Hey savvy news reader! Thanks for choosing local.
You are now reading
2 of 3 free articles.
PABLO — A Sunday evening fire destroyed a mobile home in Pablo and had firefighters searching for a resident of the home for nearly three hours before the woman turned up at St. Luke Community Hospital in Ronan.
Ronan Fire Chief Mark Clary said he and 18 volunteer firefighters arrived just after 7 p.m. to Northwood Trailer Park No. 3 to find the trailer completely engulfed in flames. Several bystanders reported they believed a female resident of the house was inside the burning structure, so firefighters began searching the home. Although firefighters had the blaze knocked down within half an hour, it was two and a half hours before they learned the woman they were looking for had showed up at the hospital.
“My guys were mad. We’re risking ourselves to go rescue someone who wasn’t there,” Clary said.
The woman had been at a friend's house, Lake County Sheriff's Lt. Mike Sargeant said, and the confusion as to her whereabouts stemmed from the fact that residents of the house had been drinking excessively.
"Obviously people were intoxicated and not knowing where each other were," Sargeant said.
Sargeant said the Sheriff's office is investigating arson as the possible cause of the fire, as well as investigating a domestic dispute that occurred between a male and a female resident of the home earlier in the evening. A 28-year-old resident, Dustin Gardipe, was arrested on an aggravated assault warrant unrelated to Sunday's incident, Sargeant said, and remains in custody at the Lake County Jail.Gardipe had allegedly threatened to set fire to the house during the domestic dispute earlier that evening.
Mission Valley Power also responded to the fire, which had burned through a main power line connected to a transformer above the house. One neighbor of the burned home lost power for the night, and Clary said the Red Cross provided her with a place to stay.
