Menu
Woman dies in fire started by 4-year-old son
A Mountain Home woman died last Wednesday morning in a trailer fire at 401 Cedar Street in Mountain Home, which was started by her 4-year-old son playing with a Zippo lighter he had found.
Ella Elaine Waltman died from inhaling smoke and hot gases in the fire, from which her son, James, and her husband, Kim, escaped.
Detective Deputy Sheriff Cathy Wolfe, who investigated the death, said the child apparently was playing with the lighter and dropped it near or under his bed, where it caught some bedding and clothing on fire.
Soon afterward the child woke his parents to tell them the single-wide trailer was on fire. Kim Waltman then took his wife and son by the hand and began to leave the trailer. But his wife, who was undressed, broke loose and returned to the bedroom to put on some clothes.
Waltman, with his son, ran to the home of a neighbor, Jason McClure, who called 911. McClure then ran to the trailer and attempted to pull off the back door near the bedroom, which had been nailed shut for some time to prevent it from flapping in the wind.
"I tore off the door, and flames shot about 15 feet high" out of the trailer, McClure said. "There was so much smoke, you couldn't see a thing."
Other neighbors, who woke to the gunshot-like sound of aerosal cans exploding in the fire, reported seeing and hearing Mrs. Waltman screaming for help from one of the windows in the rear of the trailer, shortly before she apparently was overcome by smoke. Fire Chief Phil Gridley, Jr., said by standing up to yell out the window she increased the amount of smoke and hot gases she was breathing, and apparently collapsed at the end of the bed in the rear of the trailer, where she was found a few minutes later by firemen.
The fire department received the call at 8:18 a.m. Wednesday morning. The first fireman on the scene, at 8:19, Ricky Van Meer, reported the trailer was fully involved in flame when he arrived. Learning that Mrs. Waltman was still inside, he made an effort to enter to trailer, but without an airpack, which hadn't arrived yet, the smoke and flame drove him back outside.
Within a minute after that the first fire trucks began arriving on the scene and Bud Corbus, properly equipped, entered the trailer.
"I hit that front door with an airpack on and went straight to the bedroom," where he had been told he was likely to find Mrs. Waltman. "She was already down," he said. It it is believed she had already died at that point.
Firemen tore off the side wall of the trailer to reach her and quickly removed the body as they put the flames out in the trailer within two minutes upon arrival. Fireman Dr. Richard Starkey pronounced her dead at the scene.
The trailer was an older, early 1970s model mobile home that was rented to the Waltman's by owner Jim Henson. State law requires that working smoke alarms be present in all rental properties, and that two egress points be maintained. No smoke alarm was present in the trailer and with the back door nailed shut, the only way out of the trailer was through the front door.
Gridley noted that while the state requires smoke alarms, and he constantly informs landlords of the need to place them in rental properties and be sure they are working when the property is rented (maintenance is the responsibility of the renter), that there are no criminal penalties for failure to provide them. "That's something we're going to talk about" at the state fire chief's convention later this year, he said. No charges are expected to be filed in the incident, although civil actions are possible.
Gridley said the back door, near the bedroom, had been nailed shut to keep it from flapping in the wind. "They just didn't consider the fire risk when they did that," Gridley said. "In fact, it had been shut so long, I think they'd even forgotten it was there. There were boxes and things in front of it."
Mr. Waltman was in shock at the scene after he was informed, while being treated for smoke inhalation at one of the responding ambulances, that his wife had died.
Firemen took him to a neighbor to recover from the shock while deputies and the county coroner's office taped off the scene with crime tape and rapidly began their investigation of the death. As a matter of normal procedure in a death due to a fire, the state fire marshal's office was called in to help investigate.
It was the first fatality in a structure fire in Mounain Home since the death in May 1993 of a young man at Meadows Mobile Home Park. The most recent fire fatalities occured on July 4, 1997, when five people died in a fiery auto crash on Highway 20 just a few miles outside of town.
Gridley noted that since that fire about one-third of his department are new firemen. "It's the first time a lot of them have had to deal with a fire death. They were all in a pretty somber mood," he said. "Even when there's nothing you can do, like there was here, we take things like this personally."
Services for Waltman were held Monday in Mountain Home. Mrs. Waltman is survived by: her husband, Kim J. Waltman, son James Waltman, both of Mountain Home; stepdaughters Jamie Waltman and JoAnn Waltman, both of Caldwell; stepson Michael Waltman and his wife, Shilo, of Caldwell; brother Chuck Talley; foster mother JoAnn Wilkinson of Mountain Home, in-laws Gerald and Karma Waltman of Cascade and close friend Trinity McClure and family, and one step-grandson. She was preceded in death by her parents.
A benefit fund account has been set up at Washington Mutual to help the family. Make donations to the Waltman account.