A raging fire shortly after midnight consumed a two-story house in the 14000 block of West 70th Drive in Arvada, killing a man and injuring his wife, Arvada authorities said this morning.
“When we arrived, there was fire on both the first and second floors,” said Scott Pribble, spokesman for the Arvada Fire Department.
Pribble said the wife was hanging from a gutter on the second floor and then dropped to the ground.
She didn’t suffer any injuries from the fall but had been burned before she jumped, said Pribble.
She was taken to St. Anthony Central Hospital for treatment of fire-related injuries.
Pribble estimated that the couple were in their 50s or 60s.
Firefighters took about an hour to put the blaze out, and it was sometime before the husband’s body was found on the second floor. Pribble said that a search for the victim was delayed because much of the floor had burned away.
Pribble and Susan Medina, spokeswoman for the Arvada Police Department, said that the cause of the fire has yet to be determined.
Medina said investigators were being cautious before entering the remains of the home because of the unstable nature of the structure.
The names of the couple have not been released pending notification of relatives, authorities said.
Howard Pankratz: 303-954-1939 or hpankratz@denverpost.com
