Fire Consumes Abandoned House on South Anderson in Bunnell and Is Termed Suspicious

A fire consumed an abandoned house at 210 South Anderson Street in Bunnell Friday night. Bunnell Fire Chief Derek Fraser termed the fire suspicious, and the structure “an absolute total loss.”

Fire engines were dispatched at 6:37 p.m. The Bunnell Police Department was first to arrive at the scene.

“The rear of the structure was fully involved,” Fraser said. The flames were through the roof in the back of the blue, wood structure when the first units arrived. The structure is definitely a total loss. It did initiate a brush fire at the same time,” with crews extinguishing and monitoring it later in the evening.

Bunnell’s Engine 62 arrived a short time later and initiated a defensive operation, meaning that the fire was too far advanced to enable firefighters to save the house. They ensured that the fire would not spread to neighboring properties. They were joined by Engine 25, Engine 16, Ladder 11, Rescue 92 and Battalion 92, fire unites from Flagler County Fire Rescue, the Palm Coast Fire Department and the Flagler Beach Fire Department.

The fire was under control at 7:41 p.m., Fraser said, and the state fire marshal was at the scene.

The house had sat empty, its windows boarded up, for years. It is owned by Mary Fullwood of Bunnell, according to the property appraiser’s records. It had a 2016 value of $9,500, and reflects a last sale of $28,047, but the sale date does not appear to be accurate, as it is listed as from 1900, a default setting rather than an actual sale date. Tax records indicate that Fullwood was current on property taxes, which ranged from lows of $41 in 2003 and $13 in 2010 to $218 and $215 in the past two years, the highest amounts in a decade and a half.

Fraser is in his last days as Bunnell’s long-time fire chief: he tendered his resignation last week, effective in March.