A portion of a trailer burned last night in Rolling Acres Mobile Home Court.
The Jacksonville Fire Department was paged out for a structure fire at 11:40PM to the mobile home park’s lot #31 in the 1000 block of East Morton Avenue.
Fire Captain Michael Hopper says that upon arrival, one side of the structure was fully engulfed: “When we got there, the Bravo side which is the south side trailer near the main entrance for it, that whole wall, probably 2/3 of it was burning mainly on the exterior. It had burned through the wall. With our actions to suppress the fire, we had to knock more of the wall down. Into the interior, there was smoke damage but minimal fire damage to the interior.”
A family of seven was at home at the time of the fire. Hopper says everyone made it out safely and no injuries were reported.
Hopper says that due to the extensive damage, there was no way to determine the origin or the cause of the fire. Jacksonville Fire Chief Matt Summers told the Journal Courier that the fire is being deemed suspicious due to the fire being in a place “where a fire would not normally occur.” The trailer has been deemed uninhabitable and is likely a total loss.
Fire department crews were on scene for approximately 1 hour and 10 minutes.
It was the second fire that the Jacksonville Fire Department responded to in a matter of two hours last night. Firefighters had cleared a trash can fire in a bathroom at an apartment at 1118 East Morton Avenue about two hours prior to the call to Rolling Acres Mobile Home Court.