Structure fire claims Sagle home

SAGLE — No injuries were reported after fire decimated a Sagle home on Sunday, according to Selkirk Fire Rescue & EMS officials.

The fire off Merril Martin Road remained under investigation on Monday, said Selkirk Fire Chief Ron Stocking. Officials from the Idaho State Fire Marshal’s Office are investigating the cause of the fire.

“They investigated some today and they’re coming back tomorrow, too,” Stocking said.

Nobody was home when the fire took hold, according to Stocking.

The fire was reported shortly after 7 p.m. Stocking said access to the home was challenging, although firefighters were able to get an engine onto the site of the fire.

“Everything else had to be a shuttle operations,” Stocking said of the additional water and equipment.

“When crews arrived it was a well-involved home, spreading to the brush and the forest. So the firefighters made an aggressive attack on keeping the fire from exposing a propane tank and they stopped the forward spread of the forest fire,” said Stocking.

The home was destroyed in the conflagration.

Stocking said state and federal resource managers are implementing extreme fire danger restrictions in the Panhandle, which would ban all outdoor burning aside from campfires in developed campgrounds. Stocking said conditions in the forest are alarmingly similar to those of 2015, where there was an abundance of hot weather and few wetting rains.

“Our fuel moistures are at the same levels where they were in 2015, when we had that destructive fire season. We’re at those levels now,” said Stocking.

The 2015 fire season brought to the region the Cape Horn, Tower and Three Sisters wildfires.

Keith Kinnaird can be reached by email at kkinnaird@bonnercountydailybee.com and follow him on Twitter @KeithDailyBee.