Up in Smoke

The initial firefighters on the scene were investigating a report of smoke in the area—smoke was visible above the trees from the northernmost tip of the lake, half a mile away—and almost immediately upon arrival determined that the smoke was coming from the big house on the corner and not from an overheated car engine or a backyard cookout. Having forced open the locked front door, the entry crew moved into the house and began searching the four levels (first and second floors, attic, and basement) for both signs of life and the source of the fire. The smoke was already so dense inside that the firefighters had to feel their way along the walls and employ thermal-imaging cameras. The large rooms filled with furniture made navigation especially difficult. “You get entangled in things,” said a firefighter later. “It’s very hot, and you can’t see a thing.” 

Bonnie Sipkins didn’t have the Balcoses’ new phone number, so she called their oldest son, Edwin, who lives in south Minneapolis. Edwin’s wife, Kim, said they knew about the fire. Eileen Balcos Bauman, the couple’s oldest daughter, who lives next door to her parents in St. Louis Park, was the first family member to hear the news when a high school friend, whose wife happened to drive past the house, called her a few minutes after 9 p.m. Eileen first called Edwin’s house, but the line was busy, then called the home of her sister, Eydie Waletzki, who was at work, and talked to Eydie’s husband, Darrin. Then Eileen called her father next door. Manny Balcos’s first word on hearing the news was “Why?” “I’m not sure why I said ‘Why?’ ” he mused later. “ ‘Why us?’ is probably what I meant. The house had been inspected and was in good shape. Why should it be on fire?”

“Eileen called again,” Edwin would recall. “I heard my wife saying, ‘Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!’ I just wanted to know that no one had been in the house. Once I knew that everyone was OK, then it was better.” The Balcoses drove to the house from their separate homes around the city. “I wasn’t expecting the big deal it was,” Edwin said. “But I could see the fire trucks from across the lake. I didn’t see flames, but there was a lot of smoke.”

Eileen drove her father to the site, and family members stood among the growing number of neighbors, friends, and onlookers in the subfreezing cold watching the big house—belching clouds of dark smoke and now assaulted on all sides by firefighters—burn from the inside out. Manny, in his haste, had not dressed for the weather. Neighbors brought him a heavy jacket, cap, and gloves, but he may not have noticed. Tears streamed down his face. He would later recall his last visit to the house only hours earlier: “I remember telling myself, ‘The house looks so good, the house looks so good.’ I wanted to go back and take it off the market. Everything was so good. Even the yard was good.”

“It was surreal,” says his friend and longtime neighbor Bonnie Sipkins. “Manny was stunned. Shocked. We all were.”

Fire chief Bonnie Bleskachek arrived at the Balcos house at about 9:35 p.m., three-quarters of an hour after the first call and about the time firefighters on the scene called in a second alarm. Driving to the site from Parade Stadium, where she’d been watching her daughter play hockey, Bleskachek could envision the house. She didn’t live in the neighborhood, but as an avid runner she had passed it many times while circling the lake. “I could picture it because it stood out,” she said later. “It was such a beautiful house.”