Empty Anthem home burns in Country Club
MARC BUCKHOUT ~ MANAGING EDITOR ~ 6/16/2010

Daisy Mountain Fire Department responded to an attic fire in a home off of N. Mill Creek in the Anthem Country Club Thursday evening.
Fire Marshal Phil Dyer said very little if anything was salvageable following the fire, which caused the roof of the home to collapse.
“At this point we have no reason to believe it was arson,” he said. “The owners are out of state. They left earlier this month and were going to rent out the home.”
Dyer said the management company that was taking care of the home was by earlier in the morning to check on the home. The woman found bees in the garage.
She called a beekeeper, who discovered hives in the walls, requiring some holes to be cut to remove the bees. After the bees were removed the holes were fixed.
By 1:30 p.m. the wall had been repaired and the house was once again empty.
In interviewing neighbors after the fire Dyer said some of them recounted smelling smoke as early as between 2- 2:30 p.m., but assumed someone in the neighborhood was barbequing.
“We’re guessing that the roof had been smoldering for several hours before we were called at 5:58 p.m.,” Dyer said.
When Daisy Mountain Fire personnel arrived on the scene a maintenance worker was cutting the grass with headphones on in the front yard, completely oblivious that the roof of the home he was in front of was on fire.
“We dumped 50,000 gallons of water on that home, but the roof caved in from the inside,” he said. “It was a very weird situation. We’re doing our best to figure out the cause.”
The fire department turned the scene over to the Maricopa County Sherriff’s office at 11:30 p.m. Thursday.
Dyer said that one fire fighter injured his back, falling while fighting the blaze. After being treated at John C. Lincoln Thursday evening he
was released Friday.