Water was in short supply Dec. 11 in Marion as a house nearly burned to the ground.

Kamas East resident Vern Taylor, who is 61 years old, was inside his house at 1942 N. Lefty’s Lane when it caught fire.

“I was alone in there with my golden retriever,” Taylor told The Park Record in a telephone interview. “I thought an airplane was falling out of the sky I found the fire around 7:40 p.m.”

Flames were shooting from the chimney, he said, adding that he started a fire in the fireplace at about 7 p.m.

“It had probably been burning maybe 20 or 30 minutes before I had any clue the house was on fire,” Taylor said.

Firefighters thought the blaze was doused when they left about 1 a.m. But at about 5 a.m. the fire flared up on the west side of the home.

“The fire department did all they could do but it was on fire again,” Taylor said.

Now without photographs and sentimental items that burned in the blaze, Taylor rummaged through bins of clothes Monday that were damaged by water and smoke.

“I’m so sick of it,” he said. “The smell is so sickening that I don’t even feel like eating. It’s bad, it’s the worst.”

His 4,200 square-foot house is “pretty much totaled,” Taylor said.

“I built it myself and I had it built to perfection,” he said. “It burned down on Dec. 11. I moved in on Dec. 12, 2000. One more day and I would have been there exactly eight years.”

The house was insured, Taylor said.

“You only hear about this happening to somebody else. You see it on the news and you read it in the paper and your heart goes out,” Taylor said.

Unfortunately, the South Summit Fire District kept running out of water fighting the blaze, he said.

“They put a hose in my neighbor’s 5,000 gallon tank and I think that lasted maybe eight minutes or something,” Taylor said. “It’s not acceptable because a water truck came from Park City and couldn’t make it up the winter, icy road. So they ordered another 5,000 gallon water truck from North Summit.”

Lack of water for fighting fires has concerned Kamas East homeowners for years, he explained.

“The volunteer fire departments were just helpless, they had no water,” Taylor said. “The house was pretty much all burned up.”