Jon and Mary Cummins could only watch as their Chilkat Lake home burned down Sunday night.
The couple tried to put out the growing fire with a garden hose, but couldn’t get enough water pressure to make a dent in the flames.
“We got in the boat and went out in the middle of the lake and watched. That’s all we could do,” Mary Cummins said in an interview Tuesday.
After dinner Sunday, the couple was sitting around their house with some friends. The house sits on the east side of Chilkat Lake, past the island and golf course.
The group heard a sort of “whoomp” sound outside, which they initially thought was a bear nosing around. When they looked outside, the nearby wood shed and part of the shop were on fire.
While the group tried to extinguish the blaze, flames got under the eaves of the house and began to spread. Mary and Jon ran inside and grabbed their cell phones, iPads and a few clothes.
“I was just stunned. We just sat there. I was just stunned that it could possibly even happen. We have absolutely no clue what happened,” Cummins said.
Cummins’ cell phone wasn’t working, but multiple Chilkat Lake residents saw the fire and called 911. The Cummins’ house, which they started building 16 years ago and have lived in fulltime for about 10 years, doesn’t fall within a fire service area because of its remote location, said fireman Al Badgley.
“No matter what, it would have been too late to be of any help to them because it was fully involved when we got the information,” Badgley said.
Forestry officials took a jet boat out to the site Monday morning and set up pumps and hoses to put out the fire, which was still smoldering. Forester Roy Josephson said in addition to the house and its several outbuildings, the fire burned about an acre of ground.
“It’s dry. We were lucky that there wasn’t any wind last night and the humidity came up. It could have gone a lot further,” Josephson said Monday.
Neither Josephson nor the Cummins know what started the fire. Mary Cummins said there were no power cords or fuel in the sheds, and the generator wasn’t on.
“It’s burned so badly I don’t think anyone can tell what started it,” Josephson said.
Thanks to the Cummins’ efforts to contain the fire to their property, cabins belonging to other people were unharmed, Josephson said.
Cummins said that while she is still reeling from the loss of her home, she is grateful nobody was hurt.
“Thank god there was no wind. If it had been a couple hours later, we would have been in bed and you’d be getting a different story,” she said.