Up in Smoke

Every year, the Minneapolis Fire Department responds to more than 30,000 calls for service, but only about one in fifteen of those calls involves a fire. Emergency medical service and rescue—911 requests on behalf of persons having heart attacks or requiring extrication from an auto wreck—make up two-thirds of the calls to the MFD and false alarms one-sixth, according to the department. Of the fire calls, only about half—annually about 1,000—are for structural fires (as opposed to vehicular and “other” blazes) and only a few of those attract any attention beyond the immediate neighborhood. If no one is seriously hurt or killed—in 2005 there were five civilian fatalities in Minneapolis and none involving firefighters—a structural fire is no more likely to make headlines than a car theft.

One that did probably began sometime during the early evening of November 30, 2005, one year ago. A fire department report says the initial call was received at 8:48 p.m., and exactly six minutes later the first fire truck—a pumper from Station 22, on the west end of Lake Street—arrived in front of 2528 West Lake of the Isles Parkway. The average MFD response time is less than four minutes, but the streets were icy that evening, making the neighborhood’s narrow, serpentine byways particularly difficult for the  big fire rigs to negotiate. Park and city police squads were already at the site, and neighbors, roused by the sirens and urgent phone calls from other neighbors, were bundling up and spilling out onto the street, observing but not quite believing the spectacle erupting in front of them.

Bonnie Sipkins, watching from across Sheridan Avenue, saw garish red flashes in the windows on the side of the stricken house. At first, she thought they were reflections of the lights on the squad cars in the street and alley; then she realized they were flames licking at the house’s interior. The chilling words of a neighbor whose call moments earlier had sent Sipkins into the frigid night echoed in her head: “Bonnie! The Balcos house is on fire!”  

The Balcos house may not have been the largest or grandest home on Lake of the Isles, where many of the city’s largest and grandest homes have been assembled like so many hotels on Boardwalk, nor were its owners as well known as some of the other current or recent homeowners in the neighborhood—the William Pohlads, Paul Magers, Josh Hartnett, Bobby McFerrin. But the house was a landmark, a familiar and imposing Italianate structure regally positioned on an elevated double lot overlooking a wide swath of parkland and Lake of the Isles’ western shore. Comprising more than 6,600 square feet and eighteen  rooms, it was a home fit for a corporate chief executive, movie star, or foreign ambassador—and sometimes was mistaken for such. And while the owners—Emmanuel and Ophelia Balcos—were none of those things, they were quietly prominent, respected, and cherished in both the Isles neighborhood and the community at large.

Manny and Ophelia Balcos had lived in the big house for thirty-two years—they had raised all five of their now-grown children there—but they were not on the premises the night it burned. The house was furnished, but had been unoccupied for several months because the Balcoses, following Ophelia’s knee replacement, had moved to a town house in St. Louis Park. The Lake of the Isles home had been for sale since the previous June. The Balcoses were asking $2.5 million, and just that afternoon Manny and a real estate broker had taken a potential buyer through the premises. Manny had turned off the lights and secured the front door for the last time about 5:30 that evening.