BY KAREN BOSSICK

Fire Chief Ron Bateman and his wife had hiked a half-mile up the Marshall Lakes Trail near Redfish Lake as part of a Memorial Day Weekend outing when the call came in: “We have a fire at Deer Creek Ranch.”

Scrambling to get down the mountain and back to town, Bateman got to the fire by 2:30 p.m. where he found more than three dozen firefighters from every fire department in Blaine County with their hands full fighting a fire at a 7,000-square-foot home.

The fire was called in at 12:08 p.m. Saturday, May 29, by a passing motorist who observed flames of the ranch northwest of Hailey out Deer Creek Road.

It was the second fire in the Deer Creek area in a week—the first being a half-acre wildfire in Deer Creek that likely was doused by Tuesday’s rainstorms.

The first Wood River Fire Rescue crew that arrived at the scene of the house fire found 10- to 15-foot flames shooting out of the rear of the porte cochere on the west side of the home. Within short order, a dozen more fire trucks arrived from the Hailey Fire Department, Bellevue Fire Department, North Blaine County Fire Rescue, Sun Valley Fire Department and Ketchum Fire Department.

While there were no civilian injuries or deaths, one firefighter was injured and treated at St. Luke’s Wood River.

The fire was knocked down by 5:04 p.m. and crews remained on the scene until 9 as a private company helped secure the scene.

The Idaho State Fire Marshal, contacted because of the size of the structure and the dollar loss incurred, arrived on the scene Sunday morning and declared the cause to be electrical in nature. No estimated property loss is available.

“I am very impressed by the effort and thankful for all the agencies and personnel that helped out,” said Bateman. “The Deputy Fire Marshal commented on the great stop made by the crews.  Always working to better serve our community-–through training and relationships--is paramount. I believe that we took some very specific lessons learned from a fire in East Fork late in 2020 and applied them on this incident with some success.”