Fire Guts Bedroom, Causes $86,000 Damage

A fire started by a water-bed heater gutted the upstairs bedroom of an East Chicago Avenue home Tuesday.

Greg Delaney, 28, and his 2-year-old son arrived home from shopping shortly after 10 a.m. to find smoke and fire coming from the second floor and the home’s alarm system buzzing, said engineer Dennis Shell, a spokesman for the Orange County Fire Authority.

Firefighters arrived by 10:07 a.m. “and did a fast attack, got upstairs, got out the fire in the bedroom,” Shell said. “They prevented the fire from getting into the entire upper story and downstairs.” Crews extinguished the blaze in eight minutes.

Shell said one bedroom was gutted, and a second bedroom, bathroom and hallway were seriously charred. Damage to the home was estimated at $86,000, Shell said.

Delaney’s parents, Scott, 53, and Janice, 52, also live in the house on the 800 block of Chicago with another son, Brian, 21.

The fire is particularly sad, Shell said, because Scott Delaney had been remodeling.

“The tragedy of this thing is Scott has been working on this home for years,” Shell said. “You could tell by some of the things that he was pretty meticulous. He put his whole life blood into it.”