{"id":14169,"date":"2026-01-01T15:07:50","date_gmt":"2026-01-01T22:07:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/couple-killed-in-bayfield-area-house-fire-identified\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T03:43:38","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T03:43:38","slug":"couple-killed-in-bayfield-area-house-fire-identified","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/couple-killed-in-bayfield-area-house-fire-identified\/","title":{"rendered":"Couple killed in Bayfield-area house fire identified"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"\u201c(We\u2019re)
\u201c(We\u2019re) just people who had the same dreams for life and figured out how to make that work,\u201d said Terry Fitzgerald, 90. She and her husband, Jim, 85, have been married 62 years and live on the same off-grid property outside Bayfield where they raised their twin daughters. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The couple who died in a house fire Tuesday night on County Road 525 east of Bayfield were identified Thursday as Jim and Terry Fitzgerald, according to Upper Pine River Fire Protection District.<\/p>\n

The fire started at about 8 p.m. Tuesday at the Fitzgerald\u2019s home in the 1000 block of County Road 525.<\/p>\n

The Fitzgeralds were beloved, longtime La Plata County residents. A brief Google search of either one pulls up a number of Facebook threads noting the couple\u2019s far-reaching, positive impact on the community.<\/p>\n

Jim Fitzgerald, 85, spent 30 years as a Fort Lewis College professor, teaching sociology and Spanish. Terry, 90, worked as a nurse. They met in the Peace Corps, and several years later, bought their off-the-grid, wood paneled home on a 360-acre farm in 1970.<\/p>\n

It was a place \u201ctheir two daughters grew up to love,\u201d according to a family statement included in Upper Pine\u2019s news release.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey touched many lives in Bayfield and La Plata County, but most of all they valued the land and what it had to offer living a sustainable lifestyle,\u201d it read. \u201cThey were good people, and will be missed by many.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

Newsletter signup<\/h4>\n

To receive daily or breaking news alerts, visit www.durangoherald.com\/newsletter-signup\/<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The investigation, completed by Upper Pine Fire with help from Colorado Division of Fire Prevention and Control investigators, determined two propane space heaters near frozen pipes sparked the fire.<\/p>\n

Upper Pine and Durango Fire Protection District responded to the blaze at about 8 p.m. and found the home engulfed in flames. Containment efforts were successful.<\/p>\n

jbowman@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Terry Fitzgerald lived off grid and were beloved in La Plata County<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14170,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[255,350,28,994,1370],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-14169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-death-and-dying","tag-fire","tag-headlines","tag-trueanthem","tag-upper-pine-river-fire-protection-district"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14169"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14169\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19364,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14169\/revisions\/19364"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14169"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=14169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}