BLAINE, Minn. — A Blaine family is warning others about the dangers of ice dams after water leaking from their roof is believed to have caused a fire.
What was once so familiar to Heidi and Scott Kingman, is now an unrecognizable mess.
"These are our closets, this is our bedroom," Scott Kingman said, walking through the charred remains of their two-story home. "You see I've got no clothes. Heidi's got a few clothes on the bottom."
The Kingmans have spent their last 26 years at this home in Blaine. It was on Sunday that the family home caught fire.
"Smoke started pouring out the front of the house," Scott explained. "There was so much smoke that they thought it was the neighbor's house on fire."
Unfortunately for the Kingmans, this is a pain that they know too well.
"I never believed that I would be a victim of two extreme losses," Heidi said. "And this one--the first fire was bad and this fire was really bad. Just total disbelief."
Their same home caught fire back in July of 2015. Firefighters said mother nature was to blame for that fire too. They said lightning struck the gas grill in the back of the home.
They say lightning doesn't strike the same place twice but nature can still be cruel. This time-- ice dams are to blame. Another act of nature. The Kingmans said fire investigators told them ice dams were to blame--at least from a preliminary investigation.
"He just said this year because the excessive amounts of snow and water and ice dams, that there are very--that there have been a lot of fires," Heidi said. "There will probably be more."
There isn't much left for the Kingmans other than a ton of work to do. However, they said they're not giving up hope on the place they had called home for so long.
"We are not leaving this property probably," Heidi said. "We've been here for 26 years. The City of Blaine is a great place for us."
The City of Blaine also posted on Facebook highlighting the importance of digging out fire hydrants from the snowbanks. Scott Kingman, along with his neighbor said he had dug out their cul de sac's fire hydrant just a few days prior to the fire, fortunately making it easy for the fire fighters to combat Sunday's flames.
If you would like to help the Kingmans, you can find their Gofundme page here.