A man died in a fire started by a supplementary heater Thursday.
Bill Hoag of Spruce Pine Fire and Rescue said that the fire occurred at around 7:30 a.m. Thursday morning at 30 Cardinal Lane.
“Probably a heating unit started it,” Hoag said.
The suspected cause was a propane heater. The trailer home was gutted by the fire.
That wasn’t the only fire caused by the struggle to deal with extreme winter weather in the past two weeks. Later that same day, Foxfire Real Estate, located on Upper Street (Oak Avenue) in Spruce Pine, suffered a much smaller and less tragic blaze.
According to co-owner Peter Franklin, the root cause of this fire was a miscommunication on how best to deal with the thick coating of ice on the sidewalk in front of the business, which was a hazard to anyone trying to enter or walk past.
“My mom had sprayed some alcohol and some other things (on the ice),” Franklin said.
Franklin said that his mother had mixed up a de-icing recipe that she had found that was supposed to clear the sidewalk on its own. However, the ice didn’t melt through, and Franklin, not realizing it was now covered with alcohol, decided to try another method — a propane torch designed for melting ice.
When the surface of the ice went up in flames, it damaged the exterior of the real-estate office, but didn’t make it inside the building.
“I took a fire extinguisher to it, and it wouldn’t go out,” Franklin said.
Spruce Pine firefighters were able to extinguish the blaze with minimal damage.