LYNNWOOD — Two men were left homeless March 11 after a fire incinerated their small, older, wood-frame home in Lynnwood.
Gary Wilson, a renter in the house, was taken to Northwest Hospital and treated for smoke inhalation. The other resident wasn’t home at the time of the fire, reported just after 2 p.m.
Wilson said the fire caught him by surprise.
“I was sitting in a chaise lounge in front of the house having a picnic with the cats. It was a beautiful day and I had a boom box … I plugged it into the side of the house.
“I looked up and smelled a horrible smell and went into the house and the house was blazing, I mean it was blazing. It was so scary and I tried to put it out,” Wilson said March 15.
Wilson said he tried to throw water on the fire but it kept getting bigger.
“I sort of passed out and finally I just crawled out, I got outside and started running around the neighborhood yelling help,” he said.
Bruce Pulver, of the Snohomish County Fire Marshal’s Office, said possible causes include an electrical short and careless use of smoking materials. Pulver estimated the loss at $35,000.
Wilson’s roommate, Dan Lindfors, was in the hospital at the time of the fire. Doctors there broke the bad news.
“I was in a state of shock,” he said. “I couldn’t believe anything worse could happen to me again, I thought I used my quota of bad luck for awhile.”
Lindfors said he was being treated for depression after his wife died in February following an accidental overdose.
“Also, three months ago my mother died and that same day my truck was stolen,” Lindfors said.
Everything was lost in the fire. The house, in the 3200 block of 200th Place SW southeast of Lynnwood, behind the Little Red School House, burned to the ground.
At the fire scene, Lindfors said he will miss the house especially because it was in a peaceful location, tucked into a wooded area next to a pond.
“I just loved this house. I just loved it since the moment I picked it … called it my little bit of heaven in the middle of hell,” Lindfors said.
According to Leslie Hynes, Snohomish County Fire District 1 spokeswoman, the house was engulfed in flames when firefighters arrived. Crews from Fire District 1, Mountlake Terrace and Lynnwood responded to the call.
To get to the house, which sat behind other homes on the dead end street, Hynes said firefighters ran hose lines from Poplar Way between the houses fronting on 200th Place.
While the house sat behind the city’s new Heritage Park of historic Lynnwood buildings, Hynes said there wasn’t a concern about the fire spreading to the buildings.
“It might have looked that way to people driving by because the fire produced a large column of smoke in that general area,” she said.
American Red Cross officials offered assistance to the two men.
“The Red Cross was amazingly nice,” Wilson said. “They gave us a free voucher at a hotel and gave us a voucher for clothes … and for groceries and for Dan’s prescriptions which were lost in the fire.”
The two said they are looking for a new place to live.
For information on how you can help Dan Lindfors and Gary Wilson, call 425-776-0845.
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