Thanksgiving Day blaze destroys Pine Lake mobile home

A Pine Lake man and his two dogs survived a Thanksgiving morning blaze that destroyed the mobile home he lived in on Lakeshore Drive.

“Yeah, it sucked,” Cole Quandt said of the fire that destroyed where he lived for approximately the last eight years.

Pine Lake fire chief Brian Gehrig said Monday, at this point, a cause for the fire hadn’t been determined. 

He’d activated the mutual aid box alarm system (MABAS) in response to the fire which resulted in a response from firefighters and equipment with eight different area fire departments in addition to Pine Lake.   

“What happened is ... about 5 o’clock in the morning, I woke up and I smelled smoke,” Quandt said. “I looked down my hallway and any male, of course, they’re going to go see what happened, you know.”

He said he started down the hallway to investigate but didn’t get very far before “the whole house went black.”

“That’s when I could hear the fire, I could smell the fire and that’s when I turned around,” Quandt said. “I knew my two dogs were in my bedroom and I started yelling for them.”

He picked up his 11 year-old pitbull named Roscoe “because I knew he was going to be moving a little slow” and said he yelled for his four year-old pitbull Boss. 

“Normally, Boss will follow me if I tell him ‘Let’s go,’” he said. “Well, he must have thought I was yelling at my other dog so he went into the room next to mine into his kennel, a safe space.”

Quandt said he opened the door, which he acknowledged fanned the flames, let Roscoe outside but noticed Boss wasn’t following him. 

He went back to get Boss which is also when he sustained some minor burns. 

“I tripped over Boss in the hallway,” Quandt said. “I picked him up and ran back out the front door, had them both and got to my dad’s tow truck parked there. By the time I pulled out of the driveway, the whole house was in flames.”

His father is Thomas Quandt, who owns Bull Dog Off Road Recovery Service. 

Without his cellphone and only dressed “in a pair of boxers and one sock,” Quandt drove the tow truck to his neighbor’s house.

“I woke him up,” he said. “He was in shock. He got me calmed down a little bit but it’s not something you’re going to get calmed down from right away.”

Eventually, he and his neighbor went back to his place so Quandt could be checked over by ambulance personnel. 

“I suffered the burns on my back when I went back inside earlier but they’re doing better now,” he said. 

Quandt, who said at one time had been a junior fighter on the Pine Lake fire department, said on the way to his neighbor’s house, he’d run across an oncoming vehicle which turned out to be driven by an off-duty deputy with the Oneida County Sheriff’s Office.

That’s when the 911 call was made to report the fire and also when Quandt told the deputy about what he said was almost 1,000 rounds of ammunition in the home “because I deer hunt.”

“I wanted the fire department to know,” he said. “They found my gas grill propane cylinders that were exploding ... I was on the fire department at one time. I’d sure like to know what I was getting myself into.”

A GoFundMe account has been set up for Quandt and there have been donations of items such as clothing for him as well as food for Roscoe and Boss. 

“I can’t thank everybody enough that’s contributed and helped and pulled together in this community,” he said. “I told my dad and everybody normally, I’m not one to ask for help but my dad, he had to get it in my head that ‘People want to help you, Cole. You’ve had such an impact on this community with the towing company.’ It’s overwhelming to me in a way. I appreciate everyone helping and I’m happy I’m still here to share my story.”

Brian Jopek may be reached via email at [email protected].