Large fire destroys single-story home in Palolo

Neighbors said a 70-year-old Palolo house gutted by a fire Thursday afternoon had no electricity for nearly four years following a garage fire.

“He had no electricity,” said next-door neighbor Allen Dung, 49, who was on Maui when the fire broke out. “He had running water. He had no windows in his house. The big picture windows, he broke them all out. Kind of a strange character. … Homeless people also lived there.”

The sole occupant of the house at 1921 9th Ave. was taken to a hospital by ambulance, according to Honolulu Fire Department Battalion Chief Bryan Soares.

Emergency Medical Serv­ices personnel treated and transported a 45-year-old man who was in serious condition but had no apparent signs of trauma or injury, an EMS report said.

The inside of the blackened single-wall construction home was fully involved when firefighters arrived three minutes after the 1:03 p.m. alarm, Soares said, although the roof appeared intact from the outside.

HFD sent 10 fire units with 39 personnel and had the fire under control at 1:22 p.m. and extinguished by 2:21 p.m. The fire remained under investigation, and no cause or damage estimate was available Thursday afternoon.

City property tax records show the house, owned by a trust, is a four-bedroom, one-bath house built in 1949.

Soares said the neighbors were on Maui, “freaking out,” referring to Dung and his family.

Dung, who was returning home from Lake Tahoe, got a call from a friend during a stopover on Maui.

From a video camera affixed to the outside of his home, he could see the firefighters.

He asked a friend to check on his house, fearing his home also might have been damaged.

Dung and his family arrived in Honolulu at 2 p.m., and he was allowed to return to his home at 3:05 p.m.

He discovered a good portion of his vinyl fence had melted from the fire’s heat.

Thinh Pham, 43, saw the smoke and decided to check on his friend’s house, arriving before firefighters.

While driving up 9th Avenue, “I thought it was his house,” he said. “It went up fast.”

Pham called his friend Stuart Dixon, 52, who was at work at the time and lives two houses away. Dixon, who knows the man who lives at the house only as “John,” said his aunt may have possibly left the house to him.

“At nighttime there’s no electricity and you see only flashlights,” he said. “You see all kinds of people.”

Dixon recalled the previous garage fire nearly four years ago and said he helped douse the flames with fire extinguishers.