‘The entire family ‘ — residents and felines — safe after Dixie Downs house fire

Written by Chris Reed
May 29, 2024

ST. GEORGE — A fire that started in a side yard spread into a house in a Dixie Downs cul-de-sac midday Wednesday. Firefighters were able to evacuate the residents, who were home at the time, and later rescued three cats before putting out the fire.

Damage is visible after a fire at a home in the Dixie Downs area of St. George, Utah, May 29, 2024 | Photo by Chris Reed, St. George News

While they are safe, the residents and their feline companions will be at least temporarily displaced. Firefighters determined that while the home wasn’t a total loss, the damage was enough to keep it unoccupied for a time.

The fire was first reported at 11 a.m. at 1186 N. 1610 West Circle, but the residents inside had no idea the side of their house was on fire. 

“We got a call into 911 from a passerby that a house was on fire here,” St. George Fire Chief Robert Stoker said at the scene. “Passerbys knocked on the door, got everybody evacuated.”

While the exact cause of the fire is still to be determined, Stoker said it started in an open area on the right side of the home as seen from the street. Flames spread along a wooden fence to the vinyl siding of the house, then into the attic of the home over a bedroom.

“Our investigators are looking to see what ignition sources could be there, talking with the homeowners, seeing what they’ve done the past couple days if anything out of the ordinary, those types of things,” Stoker said. “Right now, we don’t have a kind of an area of origin, but we’re still we’re still looking. It really had a lot of fuel to burn once those got burned.” 

Multiple St. George and Santa Clara-Ivins Fire and Rescue engines arrived to fight the fire. 

“We’ve had crews go in and pull the ceilings and pull some exterior wall off to make sure we’re getting the hot spots in those concealed areas,” Stoker said. 

The fire was mostly extinguished within a half hour, but there were several flare-ups of hot spots over the next hour or so. 

Santa Clara-Ivins Fire and Rescue EMS/firefighter Ryan Moore listens to a resident mentioning a cat that remained in a home that was burning in the Dixie Downs area of St. George, Utah, May 29, 2024 | Photo by Chris Reed, St. George News

Much of the visible damage was to the right side of the house, with the wooden framework of the right attic exposed above blackened paneling. 

But the homeowner and her children, being tended to by neighbors, weren’t as audibly distressed about the damage as she was about the status of their three cats. One was initially rescued, but the other two remained unaccounted for.

Santa Clara-Ivins EMS/firefighter Ryan Moore came out cradling a black cat who was anything but unlucky. After thanking him profusely, the homeowner still screamed and pointed back at the house, saying there was a third feline to be found.

About 15 minutes later, out came another firefighter with the third cat. The resident ran to the firefighter and hugged them both, then took their last feline family member to greet her waiting kids. 

Ultimately, no one – human, cat or firefighter – was injured, though Stoker said the family will be “out of the house for a while” and are being tended to by the Red Cross. 

While Stoker said the main priorities are the lives of the humans inside, it’s not lost on firefighters the importance of saving their pets.

“Pets are like family to people. And so as we go through, we do a search,” Stoker said. “We want to make sure we’re taking care of the entire family.”

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Copyright St. George News, SaintGeorgeUtah.com LLC, 2024, all rights reserved.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Chris Reed serves as a reporter for St. George News, where he has been honored with several awards from the Society of Professional Journalists for his work, including first-place accolades. He started his journalism career as a sports reporter and editor in Southern California where he once compared shoe sizes with Shaquille O'Neal and exchanged mix tapes with members of the Los Angeles Kings. After growing up in the San Fernando Valley learning karate skills from Mr. Miyagi and spending a decade in Las Vegas mostly avoiding the casinos, he came to St. George for love and married his soulmate, a lifetime Southern Utah resident. He is the proud father of two boys, his youngest a champion against both autism and Type 1 diabetes.

Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @STGNews

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