LAUREL HILL — Firefighters with Laurel Hill Fire Department were called out to two different fires early Thursday morning — one in the Snead’s Grove community of Laurel Hill and the other in Marston.
The first call came in at 4:43 a.m. for a structure fire on Sharla Street, just off of Snead’s Grove Road, according to Volunteer Firefighter Dakota Goins. A neighbor spotted the fire and called it in.
The home was an older model trailer. According to Goins, mobile homes tend to burn faster that other structures.
“We don’t know how long it had been going before the neighbor saw it. It was fully involved by the time we got there,” Goins said. “Statistics show it generally takes seven to 10 minutes for a single wide or double wide to be fully engulfed.”
The neighbor told fire officials that the homeowner, an elderly woman, did not appear to be home at the time because her car was not there.
Firefighters suppressed the flames, searched the home to make certain that no one was inside and continued to put out the remains of the fire.
Laurinburg Fire Department and Gibson Fire Departments were called in to assist Laurel Hill’s efforts.
The homeowner returned later to find her home gone.
“She went to help a friend who was bedridden. She had spent the night to help if they needed it and came home to her house burned,” said William Skipper, Laurel Hill fireman. “The homeowner said she left everything turned off when she left.”
Skipper believes that the fire started in the center of the home but does not know a cause.
“There no way to determine the cause as badly as it was burning when we got there. The damage is so bad it would be just about impossible to determine,” he said.
The home was a total loss. Skipper estimated the damage to be at $40,000 between the home and the woman’s belongings.
Laurel Hill, Springhill and Gibson fire departments also responded to a forest fire off of Marston Road to assist the forestry service.
Two fires of about 25 acres each were burning at the same time in the area. No homes were evacuated or in immediate danger.
Laurel Hill and Springhill set up a perimeter at Marston and Stanley Bonner Road to ensure that the fire did not jump the roadway into other wooded areas and protect houses and other structures in the neighborhood, according to Skipper.
By Thursday afternoon the fire continued to burn but had been brought under control.
“They were able to cut it off with the tractor, get it contained and do a back burn,” Skipper said.
Tractors are used to plow furrows into the soil that help contain fires. Back burning consists of setting fires to burn against where the original fire is headed in order to bring it under control.
Strong winds were a contributing factor making it harder to get both fires under control.
