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Unidentified burn victim flown for care after Friday fire

Posted 3:03PM on Saturday 31st January 2015 ( 9 years ago )
CLARKESVILLE - State and local authorities are continuing their investigation of a fire that left an unidentified man seriously burned Friday morning.<br /> <br /> The fire on Old Ridge Road off Habersham Mills Road near Demorest also resulted in the destruction of a recreational vehicle and other items.<br /> <br /> "They paged it out as a vehicle fire with exposures," said Habersham County Fire Chief Jeff Cain of the 7:50 a.m. call.<br /> <br /> "We had a Winnebago-type motorhome fully involved [by fire] with some exposure to basically junk they had stored around and also some pole barns he had a bunch of equipment in," Cain said. <br /> <br /> Fire units from Habersham Mills, Clarkesville and Amy's Creek responded, staying on scene for about two hours.<br /> <br /> "There was a guy in the motorhome when it caught on fire," Cain said. "We don't really know the details yet. The state is looking at it, investigating it. There was no power on the motorhome, and the best we can tell there was no kind of heat."<br /> <br /> Cain said the owner was unaware of the man's presence on his property.<br /> <br /> "The owner said there wasn't supposed to be anybody in it, so we're trying to figure out - actually they're trying to identify the guy," Cain said. "All we could get out of him was his age, no I.D. or anything. He had second- and third-degree burns to his hands and first- and second- to his face, and he did have some compromising in his airway, so I think they ended up flying him on to Augusta to the burn unit."<br /> <br /> Cain said he called in the state investigator to help identify the man and help determine what was going on at the time of the fire.<br /> <br /> "The fire actually started in the Winnebago and extended to a real small part of the building," Cain said. "Some of the machinery and stuff burned."<br /> <br /> The first call came from a passerby and the second came from a neighbor, Cain said. <br /> <br /> "Actually one of Clarkesville's firefighters, one of our volunteers, lives on that road and was getting ready to go to work and heard what he thought was somebody shooting a shotgun around 7:30 or a quarter to 8," Cain said. "He didn't think anything about it until he pulled out of the driveway and saw a black column of smoke."<br /> <br /> The investigation is continuing.

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