Home on Livernois Goes Up in Flames After Papers Catch Fire on Stove

By the time Bill Brown got the extinguisher out of the garage and was back in his house, it was too late. The kitchen was in flames. Smoke was pouring out of the side door. All Brown could do was wait for the fire department and make sure his dog, a lhasa apso named Bobby, was OK.

"I grabbed Bobby and dialed 911," he said, standing in front of his house at 695 Livernois, with soot still on his face three hours after the fire.

Fire Marshal Brian Batten said the call was placed around 7 p.m. "It started in the kitchen, the guys were here in two to three minutes," Batten said. "It appears he bumped the stove and the burner turned on."

Brown said he wasn't a very good cook and never used the stove for anything other than to put stuff on.

"I must have bumped it with the laundry basket. I had papers on it," he said. "I was watching TV in the other room and I started to smell plastic, then I saw a haze in the air and the whole kitchen was on fire."

Batten estimates that about $35,000-$40,000 in damages was caused to the first floor. Water leaked into the basement and there was some smoke damage upstairs. "The kitchen was gutted, there is heavy smoke damage throughout the first floor. It's a tragic, tragic loss," he said. The house would be boarded up Wednesday evening, he added.

The majority of Brown's first floor windows were busted out and some of the brick was colored black from the smoke.

"My house doesn't look like anything now," Brown said, with the smell of smoke still in the air. "My fridge melted … it was amazing how much damage was done so quickly."

Brown said he doesn't have insurance.

"It's more common with renters," Batten said of residents who don't have insurance. But he added that the last few fires the department has put out, the homeowners were without insurance.

Brown, who will be staying at a friend's house tonight, said his house was cluttered and he felt it attributed to the fire.

"I could have been a better housekeeper, less clutter, a better cook and used my stove as a stove and not a table," he said. "Maybe this would never have happened."