Genoa resident Ted O'Neill doesn't know what woke him up early Wednesday morning. Maybe it was his dog, Huckleberry; maybe it was something else. But whatever it was prompted O'Neill to look out his window to see flames licking the side of the house.
"About 4 a.m. I heard something that got me up," he said. "I peered outside and I could see the deck and there was fire going and then I went over to the bedroom door to see how bad it was. When I opened the door I was standing behind it and I saw flames shoot through it."
O'Neill said that he could see that the fire was well advanced and that it was time to get him and wife Katie out of the house.
"We peeled out of there with our nightclothes on," he said.
O'Neill managed to get the couple's pickup truck away from the house.
"We're really blessed," he said. "It's just a bunch of stuff but it was all of our stuff."
The O'Neills are celebrating their first wedding anniversary Saturday.
Property owners Carla and Pete Quenzer were asleep when they were awakened by an explosion in their garage/rental early Wednesday.
"It was a huge explosion that rocked the house," Carla said.
The couple's tenants got out of the rental unit attached to the garage with their dog, but four of the vehicles on the property were destroyed, including a classic Valkyrie motorcycle.
Firefighters responded to Carla's 4:02 a.m. 911 call to find the structure engulfed and embers the size of half-dollars drizzling down, igniting trees upslope from the fire.
East Fork Fire District Fire Marshal Steve Eisele said the first firefighters on the scene took up a position between the burning structure and the Quenzer's home.
"The first priority was to protect the structure," he said.
When firefighters realized that the cabin couldn't be saved, they started running hoses up the 50-degree slope above it to stop the wildland fire started by the embers.
"They did an excellent job containing the wildland fire and protecting the house," Eisele said.
An estimated 60 firefighters were on scene within minutes of Quenzer's call.
Pete Quenzer said he tried to open the garage to get at the vehicles, but was stopped by the flames.
He used a garden hose to try and slow the spread of the fire.
Carla Quenzer said the couple living in the garage's rental unit has family in Carson and that the owner of the Genoa House Inn offered them a room if they needed it.
"You never believe the devastation until you see it for yourself," she said. "And it's all gone in minutes. The fire departments were on it and up the slope. They get a lot of credit in my eyes."
Volunteers from Genoa, Jacks Valley, Sheridan, Gardnerville, Minden, Ruhenstroth, Johnson Lane and others responded along with East Fork professionals and the Nevada Division of Forestry, which sent an engine and a handcrew.
"This organization did one heck of a job," said East Fork Fire & Paramedic Districts Chief Tod Carlini.
Carlini and Eisele agreed that if the fire had happened a day earlier, winds could have whipped it into a conflagration.
"Had this happened yesterday, we would have had a significant event," Carlini said.
Eisele said the cause of the fire is still under investigation, but does not appear suspicious. No one was injured in the incident.
Genoans will be collecting clothes and household items for the O'Neills starting Sept. 27 at the Town Hall.
n Kurt Hildebrand can be reached at khildebrand@recordcourier.com or 782-5121, ext. 215.
