Fire destroys J-Lake home

JOHNSON LAKE

— Fire forced Dan Hutt of Johnson Lake to scramble from his smoke-filled home Sunday morning.

The 60-foot doublewide mobile home and its contents were a total loss.

Hutt, whose home was in Lakeview Acres west of the Lakeshore Marina, said he awoke coughing and barely able to breathe between 5 and 5:30 a.m.

“I had to fight my way to the door to get out,” he said. He woke his neighbors, Eric and Denise Carlberg, who called the Lexington Volunteer Fire Department.

“Nothing could be done to save the mobile home. The firemen went after the garage next to the house and saved it,” Carlberg said.

“With the smoke and carbon monoxide, he was lucky to get out of there alive,” said Ryan Sylvester of Ogallala, an investigator for the State Fire Marshal’s Office.

Sylvester said the fire started with an electrical space heater. He said the house did not have a smoke detector.

While neighbors comforted him hours after the fire woke him, Hutt was still stunned, saying, “It just hasn’t hit me yet.”

LVFD firefighters Bo Berry and Troy Moore, both of Lexington, were still extinguishing embers at 10:30 a.m. Sunday.