Feb. 22--OGDEN -- A Morgan County sheriff's deputy was in the right place at the right time when a fire broke out Tuesday morning at an Ogden duplex.
Deputy Rob Taylor dropped off a prisoner at Weber County Jail on 12th Street and went to A-1 Uniforms at 134 31st St. to pick up a couple of shirts.
After leaving A-1 Uniforms around 10:45 a.m., Taylor noticed smoke billowing from a duplex at 146 E. 30th St.
"That is not normal," Taylor said in a phone interview Tuesday afternoon.
Two men were outside the burning duplex when Taylor pulled up in his vehicle.
One of the men was a resident of the duplex, said Ogden Fire Department Battalion Chief Corey J. Barton, and the other is a neighbor.
Two other men and a woman who live in the duplex were not at home at the time of the fire.
"I'm glad nobody was in there (the duplex that caught fire)," Taylor said.
After making sure no one was inside the burning structure, Taylor evacuated three people living in a separate duplex building to the west and a house to the north.
No one was injured in the blaze, and residents living next to the duplex were not threatened.
Dealing with a residential fire is nothing new for Taylor, who worked as a volunteer firefighter about a decade ago in his native Alberta, Canada.
A natural-gas floor furnace started the fire in the living room of the duplex, Barton said.
Smoke was coming out of the front and back of the building when firefighters arrived about 3 1/2 minutes after being dispatched.
The fire caused an estimated $85,000 in damage.
The four occupants of the duplex have been displaced and are receiving assistance from the American Red Cross, Barton said.
Three cats in the duplex were unaccounted for after the fire.
The Ogden and Roy fire departments responded with 20 firefighters, three ladder trucks, an engine and an ambulance.
Copyright 2012 - Standard-Examiner, Ogden, Utah
