The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Creosote observed in the chimney beforehand
A house fire in Mt. Crested Butte may have started in the chimney of a woodstove, according to a report by Mt. Crested Butte police.
Emergency responders were summoned at 10:39 p.m. on Wednesday, March 5 and 23 volunteer firefighters and EMTs responded to flames and smoke coming out of the second story of a home. They didn’t leave the scene until 2:20 a.m. Thursday.
“It was a big fire,” Crested Butte Fire Protection District Chief Ric Ems said.
The house on Anthracite Drive is owned by a Louisiana couple and was being rented by one man, but was being watched by two others while the renter was skiing near Gothic.
When he arrived at the house, Mt. Crested Butte Police Officer Brad Phelps could see flames coming from the peak of the roof and spoke with the renter’s two friends, who had a dog and said everyone was out of the house.
According to a police report, Steve Johnson was downstairs watching television when he smelled smoke and ran to the kitchen, where he saw flames “at the ceiling upstairs.” Johnson woke the second house-sitter, Taylor Cone, and they fled the house and called 911.
When Phelps contacted the renter the following day after the fire department put out the flames, the renter told police he had complained to the property manager about the performance of the woodstove and the manager called a Gunnison fireplace company to inspect the chimney.
After the property manager saw the chimney “all clogged up” while he was shoveling the roof in December, the fireplace company returned to do a follow-up check. That account is confirmed by invoices that show the company charged the property manager for sweeping the chimney on a nearly annual basis, with the last cleaning being conducted in December.
But the property managers “questioned the chimney cleaning,” the report said and called the fireplace company with their concerns. After a visual inspection in mid-January, one of the fireplace company’s employees reported “all was fine.”
But after the fire Wednesday, all was not fine and the town condemned the home, built in 1979, until repairs can be made. Ems said it was an accidental fire, but added the cause of the blaze is still under investigation.
