Clark County fire claims 2 lives

Victims' names from early Monday blaze have not been released

By Matt Ollwerther - Marshfield News-Herald

GREENWOOD - Counselors will return to Greenwood Middle and High School today to help students deal with two deaths in a house fire early Monday morning in the Clark County town of Mead.

The blaze is not thought to be suspicious, Clark County Sheriff's Department Chief Deputy Jim Backus said.

The sheriff's department received a call around 2:40 a.m. Monday of a residence on Kingston Road in the town of Mead engulfed by flames.

The Department of Justice's Division of Criminal Investigation is investigating, something more frequent in recent years as fire officials work more closely with the department, Backus said. Names of the victims are being held pending notification of relatives.

Authorities in plain clothes remained at the taped-off scene Monday night.

Guidance counselors from neighboring districts were called to the Greenwood school complex on Monday to help students work through issues related to the deaths, but because the sheriff's department hadn't released the victims' names, the school district also didn't broach that topic.

"We can't give out information that we don't have," said Principal David Schaller.

Once students got home Monday, talked to their parents, heard from other students and got around Greenwood, they'd probably hear speculation about who was killed in the fire, Schaller said.

That puts the district in the position of needing extra counselors for days to come.

"We plan on dealing with this as an ongoing situation," Schaller said.

Area school districts share counselors with each other when there's a tragedy that could affect students in any one of the districts, he said, and that arrangement was put into practice on Monday in Greenwood.

The Greenwood and Thorp fire departments responded to the scene.
It is unknown whether any fire or smoke alarms were inside the residence, Backus said.

More people are killed in fires in residences than in any other structures in the United States. Four-fifths of all civilian fire deaths occurred in homes in 2004, according to the National Fire Protection Association.

In central Wisconsin, a fire on Dec. 30, 2004, in Mosinee killed 95-year-old Claire Payton, whose body was recovered from the bedroom of the nearly 100-year-old house. State fire officials ruled the cause of the fire to be undetermined.

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