One in critical condition after Champaign County mobile home fire

Credit: DaytonDailyNews

A Champaign County woman is in critical condition after a fire destroyed her mobile home and injured three other people, including two children.

Kalleen Emmons, 23, was listed in critical condition at Miami Valley hospital as of Monday afternoon. Robert Garringer, 31, was listed in serious condition at the Dayton hospital.

The names and conditions of the two children who were in the home at the time of the fire haven’t been released.

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Firefighters were dispatched to the 100 block of Maple Wood Circle near Springfield Urbana Pike about 12:15 a.m. Monday. The four victims escaped before firefighters arrived, Urbana Fire Chief Mark Keller said, and were originally transferred by ambulance to Springfield Regional Medical Center.

CareFlight was first requested to transport the victims, Keller said, but was unable to fly because of weather conditions.

“Mobile homes are inherently bad with fire conditions,” he said. “They’re not really designed to withhold any kind of fire.”

The home was a total loss, Keller said, and the fire also damaged the siding of the home next door. No damage estimates were available.

“Usually once a window is broken out, it spreads very quickly throughout the rest of the trailer,” he said, “and that’s pretty much what we had happened.”

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The home was destroyed in minutes, witness Samuel Alexander said.

He was staying with a friend in the neighborhood, he said, and the pair pulled up around 12:15 a.m. and noticed the flames.

“Everything was still pretty well intact when we got here,” he said, “flames were starting to come through the actual house itself.”

He and his friend made sure everyone was out of the house, he said, before firefighters arrived.

But within about five minutes, he said, the house was engulfed.

“It was a lot faster than what I thought a fire would be,” he said. “There’s nothing else you could’ve done … it was just gone.”

A state fire marshal was on scene Monday morning to investigate the fire. No cause has been determined yet, Keller said. The home did have smoke detectors that were activated during the fire, he said.

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