Man in wheelchair dies in Marysville blaze

Published 11:41 pm Saturday, February 7, 2009

MARYSVILLE — What if Wayne and Rene Cortez had come home earlier?

That thought was haunting the couple Saturday evening, just a few hours after a fatal blaze raged through their neighbor’s mobile home and claimed the man’s life.

When the two drove up just before 3 p.m. to their home in the Twin Cedars mobile home park, Rene Cortez, 55, noticed grayish smoke. She thought it was steam coming from the truck parked in front of the house across the roadway.

Rene Cortez came closer. Clouds of smoke were coming out of the windows.

After calling 911, Wayne Cortez, 56, broke the front door open, hoping to get to his neighbor, who he knew had been using a power wheelchair.

Inside the house, black and brown smoke had filled the air down to knee level, Wayne Cortez said. “I had to get down to my hands and knees to see,” he said.

All he could make out was the outline of the couch, Wayne Cortez said. “The couch was just a frame.”

The windows turned black and began cracking, and Wayne Cortez knew he couldn’t stay.

“If I had a fire suit I’d have gone in there, but I didn’t,” he said Saturday evening, his eyes fixed on the charred structure.

Investigators were trying to determine what caused the fire, Marysville Fire District spokeswoman Kristen Thorstenson said.

The flames had destroyed the front part of the home. It was the living room area that burned, she said.

“Nothing says the fire was intentional,” Thorstenson said. It was not immediately known if the home had working smoke alarms.

Investigators Saturday night hadn’t released the name of the man, who died at the scene.

Another neighbor, Steve Hampton, said the man kept to himself and spent most of the time inside his home.

Hampton, 62, rushed out of his house when he heard the sirens. He saw flames shooting out of a window, now a gaping, black square in the front part of the home.

He was worried about the fire spreading to other homes, or torching the tall firs and cedar trees just behind the burning house.

Many people living at the park are older, Hampton said.

“We watch each other’s back,” said Hampton, who has lived at the park since 1999.

Many of the homes, including the one where the deceased man had lived, were built in the ’70s and recently remodeled, Hampton said.

Hampton said he equipped his home with smoke and carbon monoxide alarms. “We are reminded constantly about the danger.”

Hampton remembered another fire at a home two doors down just a few years ago.

“This one was worse. We didn’t lose any lives in that one,” he said.

The news Saturday afternoon caught Esther Rollins working in her yard.

Rollins, who is the park manager, didn’t know the man well, but said hello every day when he went out to get his mail.

“My thought is: He wanted to be independent,” Rollins said. “He wanted to do things himself.”

The park’s 62 single-family homes are a mix of older and newer ones, Rollins said.

Mobile homes are especially vulnerable to fires, officials say. Another blaze at a Snohomish mobile home park in September killed a family, including two young children.

The man’s family was grieving Saturday, and Wayne and Rene Cortez wondered “what if.”

“Things happened so quickly,” Wayne Cortez said.

“It’s too bad someone wasn’t here sooner,” Rene Cortez said. “It’s just sad knowing he was in there helpless.”