Oak Harbor deck fire causes alarm

Published 1:30 am Tuesday, June 16, 2026

A deck caught fire at an Oak Harbor home earlier this week, but residents worried things could have ended much worse than they did.

At 1:34 p.m. on Monday, North Whidbey Fire and Rescue received a report of the fire at a home on Schooner Lane. Fire Chief Chris Swiger explained that burn patterns and the location of the fire’s origin suggest the cause is electrical.

Mitchell Howard and Carla Farnell — the only two residents — returned home from running errands shortly before noticing the fire. Farnell smelled smoke when Howard opened the front door to retrieve the mail, and then she heard a “crackling” sound.

She dismissed these things at first, as she felt confused why someone would have lit a fire and instead chalked the noise up to rain or hail.

But when she opened some curtains to reveal the deck, Farnell saw a “blaze of fire” creeping closer towards the house. The flames were quite tall, she added.

“I was thinking I was gonna see big balls of hail,” Farnell recalled, “and it was great balls of fire.”

Howard and Farnell panicked. Neither of them have experienced a house fire before.

“My heart skipped a beat,” Farnell said.

Howard and Farnell exited the home with their cat and called 911. Farnell estimated firefighters arrived about five to seven minutes later, and in the meantime, a neighbor ran to grab a hose to help if needed.

Howard worried the fire could have grown and the house cat could have been hurt if he and Farnell had been gone any longer.

“We were mainly full of gratitude at the response of the first responders, of course,” he said. “But also to any forces that are protecting us, who are looking after us.”