Fire in Hillsborough
 

According to The Villages on-line news, a patio villa in Hillsborough was totally engulfed in flames overnight. The fire occured at 2:00am Wed. The house and car in the garage were a total loss, as well as damage to siding of the house next door. The patio villa was occupied by renters, who escaped unharmed. The cause of the fire is thought to be electrical.

Article and photos at TV on-line news.

Fire was on Viscaya, about the 4th or 5th house in on the right side.
Hubby saw it and said there was a car and two golf carts in the garage which were totally destroyed. Said by the looks of it, the fire may have started in the garage.

I am guessing an electric golf cart. I feel so bad for the owners and grateful that the renters escaped unharmed.


Thank you for telling us Jan.

We live in Hillsborough and went to see the house this morning. We can only thank God that no one was injured. The house, car, and two golf carts are a total loss. The house next door also had their siding melt. It does appear that the fire started in the garage. The wall between the garage and kitchen in totally blown out. Our thoughts are with the owners and the renters

I know someone who had a very bad fire in her villa that started in the garage. After investigation, it was blamed on electrical wiring. I saw the totally destroyed breaker panel. A lot of the house fires in TV seem to originate in the garage --- and the electric golf carts are not the cause.

Let's not start jumping to conclusions as to a golf cart as the source.

Agree, it doesn't do any good to guess as to what the cause was, that is in the hands of the Fire Inspectors to determine. No sense getting folks worked up about faulty wiring or golf carts. Very sad for the owners and renters, they both lost property.

this is how rumors get started - people forget you said "i am guessing"

so why so many fires in the garages? Why so many fires starting in garages with electric golf cart? Maybe these houses are not properly wired for charging electric carts?

https://www.talkofthevillages.com/fo...rt-fire-65669/


https://www.talkofthevillages.com/fo...e-video-59040/


https://www.talkofthevillages.com/fo...78/index3.html




Remember, I said I was guessing about it being an electric cart. We have one electric cart and one gas cart.

Gracie, that was not confirmed.

" it was possible that the separate low amp charger was also present. That combination could have cause the spark that ingnited the hydrogen gas produced by all wet cell lead acid batteries."

Read Franks words carefully,

By the way and this has been posted here before gas carts have have fires also.

You eliminate both possibility just go solar carts

Why don't we put smoke detectors in the garage?

good ?

AND POST #29 from the Hadley house fire thread....

I have been lucky to date to never experience such an event. No mater the cause, it must affect how you sleep forever after....

Smoke dectectors are put in Village houses according to code. If you want more, there is no reason why they cannot be installed.

Correct, but would you even hear the thing going off in the garage?

I realize smoke detectors in the garage are not in the code. But, why haven't we been alert enough to add them on our own, especially with golf carts (gas or electric)?

How about alarms,the paper did not say a thing about the alarm system

Thankfully the inhabitants escaped unharmed. I imagine something woke them.

Regarding the fire?

According to the paper interview it stated the single resident (male) felt heat on his cheek and woke up. His hair and face area was singed. Lucky he woke up when he did.

Wasn't there a working smoke detector in the house? The man said he awoke due to feeling the heat from the flames.

I thought it was building code to have hard wired smoke detectors that include battery backup.

Oh that is awful. I misunderstood.

For those of us who are deaf or very hard of hearing the smoke alarms don't work well if we are sleeping. Or he was in a very deep sleep. People still die in their sleep even with working smoke detectors.

We were recently invited to a fire alarm sales show. Being a 42year ex firemen I was interested so we went. I knew the alarms we had in our homes were not the best and were slow on the response. Up north I had an updated system installed and was happy with it. So we went to the show and bought into it. the garage ,attic and kitchen have heat detectors, all other rooms have smoke detectors. They're all wireless and automatically communicate with each other. The ones that came with the house are still in place. Well here's what happened. We had a party in the house just before Christmas. I was in the kitchen cleaning up, my wife was in the bedroom putting some stuff away. My daughter and son in law were in the living room. All of a sudden the NEW smoke alarms go off, I look up from the kitchen sink and say holly s--t there's a fire in the living room. Mind you my daughter and son in la were in that room and didn't notice it. The alarms that came with the house didn't activated until after we had started to extinguish the fire. The new alarms were not cheap but after seeing first hand how well they worked I don't care how much they were.

We had a neighbor here in Tampa that had a bad fire that began in the garage due to a car battery charger they plugged in.
Thank goodness everyone got out.

I've been saying that for a long time. It seems as though most of the fires in TV start in the garage. The house smoke alarms are all hard wired, and if one goes off, they all go off. Would it be expensive and difficult to connect a hard wired smoke alarm in the garage to the other alarms?

Wouldn't the car exhaust set off the alarm all the time?

That makes sense. Better to have the fire department tell you what is dangerous.

ine haven't gone off in the garage yet from exhaust, I now also have a heat detector out there. Besides your not supposed to start the car with the door closed, so by the time you start the car and get outside the air would be cleared.

How go you get a car and 2 golf carts in a patio villa garage?

Two car garage
 

I was wondering same----maybe a two car garage? There are a few villa's with two car garages. Glad to hear everyone got out okay.

I hope we all hear from the fire investigator what caused this so we can all learn from it - thankfully the resident got out OK - went past this villa - it does not have a two car garage - if you have a small car and nothing else in the garage perhaps two golf cars may fit!

I'm confused if he was a single guy why did he have to golf carts

You can get them in there. We have a patio villa and have considered this proposition. It would be a very tight fit!

According to the newspaper, he has a woman partner who was away on business when the fire started.

I read some on line comments on this fire and one neighbor said "the occupants were full time renters, two men and a women all in their 30's". My question is, is there not an age restriction even for renters?

Anybody over 19 can be a resident/renter. Only 80% of owners need to be over 55. One person on the deed over 55 fulfills the requirement.

The Unexpected Golf Cart Hazard - Firehouse
2004 article on electric golf carts and potential fire.
http://www.usfa.fema.gov/pdf/efop/efo27803.pdf

One of my golfing buddies has a 34 year old son who owns 3 houses in The Villages and rents them out. No, the father is not on the deeds at all.