March 21, 1991

Boy avoids serious injury in trailer fire

       A 13-year-old boy narrowly escaped from a fire that destroyed one trailer and damaged two others Wednesday in the Oak Meadows Mobile Home Community in White River Township.  The boy, Daniel Shrum, was taken to Community Hospital South, Indianapolis, where he was treated for smoke inhalation and released.  Shrum is the son of Linda Wilson, who owned the trailer.  Capt. Scott Cassin of the White River Township Volunteer Fire Department said she was at work when the fire broke out just before noon.  Shrum was home alone and had been asleep before the fire, Cassin said. He woke up and noticed smoke in the trailer, and called the Fire Department.  When firefighters were dispatched at 11:8 a.m., they expected to find the boy still trapped in the trailer. “Apparently the child called from the trailer and said he was going to be coming out, but none of the neighbors could find him,” Cassin said. “I guess he did manage to get out just as we got there.”  The cause of the fire is still under investigation.  Cassin said Wilson’s trailer was destroyed, along with three cars that were parked nearby. There also was smoke and heat damage to trailers on each side — one belonging to Stephanie Wicker and one belonging to Ed Lawson — and to two storage sheds. Cassin estimated the value of Wilson’s trailer at $8,000, and another $8,000 for its contents.  He said the flames spread rapidly before firefighters arrived at the trailer court, on Stones Crossing Road just west of State Road 37. “When we were going down 37, we could see a little bit of smoke,” he said. “Then all of a sudden we saw a fireball and thick, black smoke. It was pretty much history from there.”  (Reprinted with permission from the Daily Journal)

 
(Click on thumbnail to enlarge photo)
 
 

---