{"id":53037,"date":"2020-06-24T00:25:32","date_gmt":"2020-06-24T06:25:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/fire-claims-house-near-durango-airport\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T04:02:37","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T10:02:37","slug":"fire-claims-house-near-durango-airport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/fire-claims-house-near-durango-airport\/","title":{"rendered":"Fire claims house near Durango airport"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=5217f608-1ac2-4416-8e78-c512634d802e&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"1700\" height=\"1133\" alt=\"A house north of the Durango-La Plata County Airport was destroyed by fire Saturday night. The Upper Pine River Fire Protection District is investigating.\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">A house north of the Durango-La Plata County Airport was destroyed by fire Saturday night. The Upper Pine River Fire Protection District is investigating.<\/span><span class=\"credit\">Shannon Mullane\/Durango Herald file<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><p>The owner of a house north of Durango-La Plata County Airport said a propane explosion in his barbecue grill led to a fire Saturday night that destroyed his home.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI had just got back from a long motorcycle ride to Amarillo, out in the sun and the wind, and I just wanted to relax and have a couple of burgers, when all of a sudden we heard a big bang,\u201d said Michael \u201cStretch\u201d Greer, owner of the house.<\/p>\n<p>Greer said he and his girlfriend, Larita Carter, were able to escape the house unharmed. His two dogs also escaped unharmed.<\/p>\n<p>However, his cat, Opal, wasn\u2019t discovered until late Saturday buried in a couch in the house that survived with only smoke and water damage.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe\u2019s a rescue kitten, and this is the only house she\u2019s known. I can\u2019t keep her out of the house, now. She climbs in through open windows,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Greer said he has a detached garage with electricity where he\u2019s set up a cot. In addition, friends have offered to provide him with campers to live in on the property. He also said he might spend a few nights at his girlfriend\u2019s house.<\/p>\n<p>Carter has set up a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gofundme.com\/f\/u9ez7b-house-fire-total-loss?utm_source=facebook&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_campaign=p_cf+share-flow-1&amp;fbclid=IwAR1kyHWjx_5vcbfFbKye0p5iZP1WYHmWcwlJGQtyEQ7hECuxZl75f20GrX0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">GoFundMe page<\/a> to help Greer. The goal is $10,000, and as of Monday afternoon, the page had raised $4,140.<\/p>\n<p>The Upper Pine River Fire Protection District continues an investigation.<\/p>\n<p>Upper Pine Deputy Chief Roy Vreeland said he expected to complete an investigation by the end of the day Monday.<\/p>\n<p>Vreeland has taken witness accounts of the fire\u2019s start. However, he added, \u201cUntil the investigation is complete, I don\u2019t want to speculate about the cause.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The fire started on the house\u2019s exterior, he said.<\/p>\n<p>When firefighters arrived, flames had spread to two rooms and the attic.<\/p>\n<p>The emergency call came in about 8:35 p.m. from occupants of the house, he said.<\/p>\n<p>Vreeland said some contents of the house are salvageable, but the structure is a complete loss.<\/p>\n<p>Upper Pine responded with a number of resources and firefighters. Vreeland said he did not yet have the incident report to detail all of the department\u2019s resources and firefighters on scene.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere were a lot of resources, which is normal on a structure fire,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Durango Fire Protection District assisted. Resources from DFPD included a water tanker and an engine.<\/p>\n<p><em class=\"mwc_shirttail\"><a href=\"mailto:parmijo@durangoherald.com\">parmijo@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Investigation continues into Saturday night blaze<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":53038,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[350,28,29,1370],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-53037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-fire","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter","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\/53037","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=53037"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53037\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":88205,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53037\/revisions\/88205"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53037"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=53037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}