Blaze destroys home

A Smartsville family is homeless after an overnight fire early Monday destroyed their trailer and most of their belongings, as well as killing four dogs they owned.

Kristi and Kevin Reese said they were about to go to bed early Monday when Kevin noticed flames coming from inside the trailer wall next to a fireplace. The couple had built their first fire of the fall earlier in the evening.

Realizing the fire would spread, the couple got their three children, as well as Kristi Reese's sister-in-law and her three children, out of the double-wide, which the couple had lived in since 1990.

"We got all the kids out and grabbed hoses, but there wasn't much we could do," said Kristi Reese, 35.

Though fire crews from Smartsville, Linda, Olivehurst, Penn Valley and Rough and Ready responded to the blaze on the 8700 block of Magonigal Lane after the initial call at 12:28 a.m., the fire had burned the 1979 trailer to the ground by 1 a.m.

"It could've helped some if they got here sooner, but I don't know how much," said Kevin Reese, 38. "With a mobile home, it's like a match."

A total of seven fire vehicles responded, along with an investigator from Cal Fire. The couple praised the firefighters' work to keep the fire from spreading to a neighboring fifth-wheel trailer where Kevin Reese's mother lives.

Marc Zamora, a captain with the Smartsville Fire Protection District, said his crews went into a defensive mode almost as soon as they arrived at the fire to stop it from spreading elsewhere.

"With the construction of those older trailers, they do seem to go up like a tinderbox," he said. "We're just happy all the residents got out without injury."

He added, "If we had 50 engines show up, I don't think we could've stopped it."

The fire destroyed the trailer, which had the family's furniture, beds, clothes and most other possessions. It burned hot enough to melt plastic garbage cans outside, and Kevin Reese said he felt the fire's heat as he stood 20 yards away.

More upsetting, Kristi Reese said, were the four miniature pinschers who apparently didn't flee the trailer in time. As they sifted through the wreckage Monday morning, the couple found the body of one of the dogs and buried it.

"There are certain little things I want to go through it all and find, but I'm scared to go through it because I don't want to find my dog," Kristi Reese said.

During the frenzied escape from the home, Kevin Reese said, he lost track of the four smaller dogs, though one loyal dog named Daisy did make it out.

"I always thought when you have a fire, you'll have time to grab a few things," he said, his voice growing heavy, forcing him to pause. "We just had time to get everyone else out."

The couple said they'd had fires before in the trailer's fireplace, though not for several months. Kevin Reese said he'd checked the flue before building a fire Sunday evening.

Zamora said the fire's cause was unknown, but fire officials believed the Reeses' assessment of how it began was accurate.

As the couple sifted through what was left of the trailer Monday afternoon, they mulled their options. The Three Rivers chapter of the American Red Cross had provided money for food and clothes for their children, and they had family they could stay with for awhile.

But the trailer was not insured, and because of a chronic medical condition, Kevin Reese said he can't work. He and his wife spend much of their time volunteering with the North Yuba Little League in nearby Browns Valley.

"I don't want to go nowhere," Kevin said, as he looked at an expanse of ash where he could identify what was the family's plasma television, refrigerator and kitchen sink. "I want to clean this up and put something here."

With the family already in a difficult financial situation, Kristi Reese said, it won't be easy.

"It's hard to sit here and look and see your life in piles," she said. "You don't ever think it's going to happen."

Contact Appeal-Democrat reporter Ben van der Meer at 749-4709 or bvandermeer@appealdemocrat.com.