Rockerville home destroyed in morning blaze

By Kayla Gahagan, Journal staff | Friday, November 14, 2008

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Black Hawk firefighter Chuck Moad slipped a helmet from his head, rested soot-covered hands on his knees and stayed still for a moment.

The noise spun around him -- the alarms of empty oxygen tanks, the pop of ammunition exploding, the wind whipping through the trees. A fellow firefighter fitted Moad with a new tank and he crossed the lawn of 23781 Pine Haven Drive and went back in.

Moad was one of several dozen firefighters who battled a house fire Friday in Rockerville. Several departments, including Rapid City, Whispering Pines, Hill City, Rockerville and Black Hawk provided trucks, crews and water, but the fire gutted the home.

Crews worked in the morning cold under the dusting of fire-fighting foam, ashes and a light snowfall.

Wind, in ocean-like waves, rushed through the pines and pushed the smoke clear of the house, spraying snowflakes and lifting balls of foam into the trees like cotton candy.

The biting winds and below-freezing weather created additional headaches for the workers.

"This was an ice-skating rink," said Paul Smith, captain of the Rockerville department, pointing to the area in front of the garage. "It makes it dangerous."

And then there was the process of getting water to the house.

"We were hampered by lack of water in the area," Smith said, noting that is common in rural areas where there are few or no fire hydrants.

Fire trucks lined the highway, taking turns dumping water into a tank, which was then pumped up the hill to a fire truck stationed next to the house.

"We got as much up the hill as we could," said Chet Roberts, a Rockerville firefighter. "It's a long and tedious process."

The house, owned by John Fredericksen, had been for sale and was listed at $412,000.

The color pictures offered by real estate company Coldwell Banker show the house in all its glory: a private, four-bedroom, 2.5-baths, triple-garage "sanctuary," built on 3.86 acres at the top of a steep, paved incline.

There was not much left of the structure about noon Friday. The fire, which one firefighter said possibly originated in the fireplace, gutted a fully finished basement and ate through the upper half of the house, leaving nothing more than blackened beams, shattered windows and the skeleton of a wrap-around porch. Smith said no cause for the fire has been determined, and it is still under investigation.

Jeff Nisen has been a firefighter for 23 years and knows how fast wind can change the course of a fire.

"If the wind was not so high, we would have saved more of it," he said, eyeing the house. A third air tank was strapped to his back, and this time, he was on call to rush in and rescue anyone who might fall through the first floor into the basement.

By now, fires are routine to him, he said. And as a veteran, it's his job to coach new firefighters in how to let adrenaline help, not inhibit your work.

"We can communicate during the fire with radios, and you can hear the new people breathing hard, which uses up their oxygen faster," he said. "You just tell them to calm down, they're doing great."

No injuries were reported during Friday's fire.

"I'm so glad no one was hurt. The most heartbreaking things was when the wife was asking where her husband was," he said, of the moments after crews arrived.

It is unclear how many people were in the home when the fire started. Fire officials said everyone was located, and the family left the area immediately, Red Cross director Richard Smith said.

"People are different in how they handle it," he said. "Some people want to stay until the fire department leaves."

Contact Kayla Gahagan at 394-8401 or kayla.gahagan@rapidcityjournal.com