Corbin mobile home damaged by early-morning fire

A mobile home on Curry Lane west of Corbin was gutted by fire Tuesday morning.

Keavy firefighters were paged to the scene off of Ky. 312 in Whitley County at 6:29 a.m.

“The initial call was that two mobile homes were on fire,” said Assistant Chief Skip Dodd, adding that the first units to arrive on the scene reported it to be just one.

Dodd, who arrived with the first truck at 6:46 a.m., said flames were coming through the roof in the kitchen area.

“All I saw was flaming coming out of that end,” Dodd said.

Firefighters needed about 20 minutes to get the flames knocked down and had the fire under control by 7:45 a.m.

No one was inside at the time.

Dodd said the occupant, Doyle Lester, had just left for work.

“He had no idea what caused it,” Dodd said of Lester, noting the fire appears to have started in the kitchen. “He said he fixed himself some breakfast and that was about it.”

Dodd emphasized that there was nothing about the blaze to suspect arson.

Dodd said the timing of the fire was good from a manpower point of view.

“A couple of our firefighters were out and on the way to work when the call came in,” Dodd said. “Instead of going to work, they headed on to the scene.”

Corbin firefighters provided manpower assistance at the scene.

Before the firefighters could tackle the blaze, they had to tackle snow and ice covered road to get trucks down a hill to the scene.

“We had to have some help to pull it back up the hill,” Dodd said, noting Corbin City Utilities sent a backhoe over to scrape the road down to the blacktop.