Battery charger ruled source of Friday blaze; nobody hurt, damage extensive
by Kurt Johnson
Lithium batteries charging on a table in the garage of an L Street home in Aurora have been identified as the cause of a Friday morning fire which destroyed the garage and caused extensive damage throughout the house, which is owned by Joseph and Kylee Ochsner.
Assistant Fire Chief Jeff Schneider reported that the garage and a vehicle parked in the driveway were fully engulfed in flames by the time the Aurora Fire Department arrived on the scene shortly after the call came in at 9:40 a.m.
“I’ll give a shout out to the ambulance crew because they were the first to arrive and they were able to give us an idea of what we had before I ever got on the scene,” Schneider said. “The Ochsner’s house was on fire and I knew we had possible exposure to Dr. (Steve) Alberts’ house and the house to the north, so I knew we had two other possible structures that had the possibility of catching on fire. We called Hampton fire for a mutual aid situation because we knew we were going to need more manpower.”
Schneider said the Giltner Fire Department was also called in to help provide medical backup, since several of the Aurora EMS crew were fighting the fire.
“It was all hands on deck,” Schneider reported. “The garage was already gone and the van was gone so it was just a matter of getting into the house and stopping it from going anywhere.”
Firefighters were sent into the smoky structure to assess how far the fire had spread, which Schneider said was a critical yet difficult decision.
“The house was full of smoke, but I knew if we were going to stop the fire from going west to east inside the house we had to get inside and see what that upstairs bedroom looked like,” he said. “Whenever you send people in harm’s way it’s a scary thought, but I knew we had to get somebody inside to see what we had going on.”
Firefighters quickly learned that the blaze had already spread from a utility room to the kitchen and into the back/center portion of the house.
“The upstairs window failed and that allowed the smoke and fire to go into the house,” Schneider said. “When we got there we had fire on the eaves above where the garage was and then you always have to worry that if it gets in the attic and goes across the top of the house you have a mess on your hands. We ended up cutting a hole in the roof, basically above where the garage was on that part of the house, and that allowed a lot of the heat and steam inside to escape. Once we got that down, everything cooled down quite rapidly.”
Family touched by support
Joseph and Kylee Ochsner were still coming to grips with the devastating fire a day later, but paused to share a humble message of thanks with firefighters and the community at large.
“We are just beyond touched by people we’ve known and complete strangers who have reached out to offer help just in any way, doing anything they can do or whatever they think we might need,” Joseph said. “The community, our church (Pleasant View Bible Church) and family and the fire department, especially the fire department, first responders and Aurora Police Department, everybody that was there were just wonderful. Everybody has been very good to us, great to work with and very respectful, very generous. It’s been humbling for us.”
Joseph shared that he was working in Hastings at the time the fire broke out, while his wife, Kylee (Williams), a Giltner area native, was shuttling kids back and forth to swimming lessons. The Ochsners have five children, ranging in age from 6 to 14 years in age.
“We’re doing swimming lessons for the week so we had one daughter at home who was just getting ready to go jump in the van and go to swim lessons,” Kylee reported. “She headed out to our garage, which is where the fire was. The Lord was watching over her and got her out of the house before it got too bad, thankfully.”
“I was down in the Hastings area trying to get home,” Joseph added, “so thankfully we’ve got family and great support nearby and even neighbors that ran to the pool to get kids for us. She (Kylee) thought it was going to take the whole house at some point, that it was going to be gone.”
Schneider confirmed that smoke filled the house and that in fact the master bedroom had sustained heavy damage, bringing a fire marshal and insurance investigators to the scene to assess the damage. That process will take time.
“We’ll meet with the insurance adjustor and go through the house and get their assessment of what can be done and what they’re willing to cover,” Joseph said. “We’ll meet with the adjuster next week and hopefully get some more concrete plans and start going forward.”
In the meantime, friends stepped up by offering a place to stay, giving the Ochsner’s a sense of stability, and immense gratitude.
“The Lord is good to us,” Kylee said. “We’ve got housing taken care of so we’re very blessed. And in that regard, people’s generosity is overwhelming us.
“It’s a powerful reminder that everything we’ve worked for on this earth is not going to last, but we have a Father in heaven who we treasure, and that cannot be destroyed,” she added, fighting back tears. “So that’s just been a thing to see as we work, you know. You feel like you work so hard for stuff and then it’s gone. Now we need prayers for patience, and direction, and wisdom as we take the next steps forward.”
While damage was extensive to a house the Ochsners have lived in since 2008, the family is grateful that nobody was hurt. It’s a challenge, Joseph confided, especially since the family moved back in just three weeks ago, having moved out for six months while a basement was installed underneath the house.
“We had just gotten cleaned up, got our feet underneath us from that and to have this happen is just not something you plan,” he said. “But today we’re so grateful that the family is here. That’s the big thing. Nobody is hurt and everybody got out of the house. And the response from everyone, from family to people far and wide that have heard, it just brings tears to our eyes to know how much they’ve done for us. So right now, we’re just kind of trying to get our feet back under us.”
On that note, relief funds have been established for the Ochsner family, with donations being accepted at both the Heartland Bank in Aurora and all Cornerstone Bank branches. Heartland Bank is also serving as a drop-off site for items to be donated to the family.
While the cause of the blaze was ruled accidental, firefighters, as well as the Ochsners, said there is a lesson there to be learned.
“Just a warning, that anybody who has those to be safe when you are charging them,” Joseph said of lithium ion batteries. “The guy today (state fire marshal) said it was like winning the lottery, but it’s not the lottery you want to win. So the fact that ours apparently failed and overheated and started a fire is what it looks like happened.”
After talking to the fire marshal, Schneider reported that fires related to lithium ion batteries are more common than people might think.
“You hear about them on airplanes and stuff, with these batteries going off, but that lithium ion issue is becoming a big deal,” he said. “People need to be careful.”