By Hattie Brown Garrow and Jeff Sheler
The Virginian-Pilot
NORFOLK, Va. — When firefighters arrived at Crystal Corbin’s South Norfolk mobile home early Nov. 8 — six minutes after receiving a call — smoke and flames were showing. Within 20 minutes they had doused the blaze, but Corbin’s home was reduced to a pile of rubble.
Firefighters don’t know how it started, but it moved fast. For residents of South Hampton Roads, an area with at least 4,700 mobile homes, it’s a reminder of the vulnerabilities of living in such structures.
Fire officials say modern mobile homes are no more susceptible to fire than houses built on site. However, they acknowledge that the smaller, more confined dwellings tend to burn faster and present other unique challenges.
“If we get called very early and we get there very quickly and we’re very aggressive,” then mobile homes can typically be saved, said Chesapeake Fire Department Battalion Chief Sam Gulisano. Otherwise, it’s often a total loss.
The U.S. Fire Administration says mobile homes account for 17,700 fires, hundreds of deaths and $155 million in property losses during a typical year. An estimated 345 people die in mobile home fires and another 765 are injured each year, according to the agency’s website.
Though Corbin’s home is gone, she and her four children survived. Corbin was hailed a hero because she ran back inside to save her 12-year-old daughter. Both suffered burns, and Corbin was treated for smoke inhalation.
It was Chesapeake’s second mobile home fire this year, Gulisano said Friday. There were three in 2009 and six in 2008. The city has 23 mobile home parks, with a total of 1,965 units, according to a spokesman.
Virginia Beach and Suffolk each have about 1,400 mobile homes. Norfolk officials said that number was not available, and Portsmouth’s number was not available.
Nationwide, some 19 million people live in more than 8 million mobile homes, known in the industry as “manufactured homes,” according to the Manufactured Housing Institute. In the past two decades, they have accounted for 20 percent of all single-family homes.
The federal government enacted tougher guidelines for mobile home construction in 1976. They set stricter rules for use of flammable material and surfaces and for fire safety design and equipment.
Suffolk Deputy Fire Chief Ed Taylor said the changes made a significant difference. “The older homes had a lot of plywood and wood paneling. The constructions was a lot lighter weight,” Taylor said. “Now they have constructions codes and they use more Sheetrock and other material that are less able to burn.
“I’ve been to several fires involving older homes and they tend to burn up. The newer ones don’t burn nearly as quickly.”
But even modern mobile homes present special challenges. The roof, for example, burns through more quickly than a typical residential roof and is not safe for firefighters. Mobile homes also have what Gulisano describes as “exposure challenges.” Other units could be as close as 10 feet, giving fire free rein to spread.
Unlike typical neighborhood streets, Gulisano said, access points to units in mobile home parks are often narrow and there’s not as much room for fire engines and ladder trucks to line up.
A bulletin published by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health says the primary causes of fires in mobile homes involve heating units and electrical malfunctions.
Gulisano said unattended cooking is a major cause of fire among all types of residences in Chesapeake. The most deadly fires often involve people who fall asleep while smoking and people who smoke while using an oxygen tank, he said.
No matter the structure, fire detection and prevention strategies are the same: have a working smoke detector, don’t overload power outlets, keep space heaters away from anything flammable and stay in the kitchen while cooking.
Mobile home fires can quickly grow out of control, Gulisano said, because there’s not as much wallboard and drywall, and there are fewer walls to keep the fire from spreading.
“It goes back to the size of structure. A ranch-style house may be 25 to 28 feet wide and have 3,000 square feet of floor space. A typical manufactured home may be 14 feet wide,” said Taylor, the Suffolk deputy fire chief. “It is a smaller confined space and the heat builds up faster and you have a flashover and everything goes up on a fire ball.”
In most cases, Taylor said, “By time the fire department arrives, it’s gone.”
Thayer Long, executive vice president of the Manufactured Housing Institute, said mobile homes get an unfair rap. “There is nothing intrinsic about manufactured homes that makes them more prone to fires,” he said. “The materials used are exactly the same as those found in other structures.”
Chesapeake’s Gulisano acknowledges that it would be unfair to “single out mobile homes as being a terrible thing, as an unsafe thing to live in.”
“Do fires spread a little bit more quickly in mobile homes? Yes,” he said. But they’re not a “death trap.”
More than 17,000 mobile homes catch fire each year, killing hundreds of people, according to the U.S. Fire Administration.
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