Two die in Alligator Point fire

Whenever someone in Alligator Point needed help, A.J. Thompson was there.

Just after midnight, on Monday morning, John Murphy and fellow firefighters on the Alligator Point and Lanark Village fire departments tried desperately to return the favor.

Murphy and his wife were on an early start to catch a flight out of Jacksonville when they drove by 593 Pine Street, where A.J. and his wife, Joyce, had lived for many years, both mainstays of the community.

Smoke was pouring from the single-wide mobile home and the Murphys went to investigate.

“John said the smoke was coming out of the house so thick he could not get to the door,” said Steve Fling, chief of the Alligator Point department.

Murphy called the fire department, and 911 at about 12:16 a.m.

It took about 12 minutes for the five Alligator Point firefighters to arrive on the scene, with their truck, and attack the blaze with two lines.

“It was fully involved. It was completely ablaze,” said Fling. “It had already reached its max and was starting to come back down. It took less than 10 minutes to knock it down.”

Firefighters and First Responders discovered two bodies inside the charred remains of the premises, A.J., 80, and his wife Joyce, 71.

No one had to wonder who the couple were.

A.J. had remained active even after turning 80, running a wrecker service, working as a mechanic on people’s cars, doing tractor work, operating a small well drilling rig.

“If you were stuck, if you needed a jump you called A.J.,” said Fling. “He was always there to lend a helping hand. The man would have given the shirt off his back for you, very low-key, very unassuming, quiet.”

Fling’s friendship with A.J. dated back about 25 years, when their paths first crossed, also in a dire situation.

When Fling began as fire chief in 1984, he first met A.J., who worked as a mechanic on the department’s equipment.

“Around 1985 or ‘86, it wasn’t long after the First Responder program started, I got a call from the sheriff’s office at 1 or 2 a.m. in the morning,” he recalled. “A lady had called and someone was screaming for help in the Pine Street area. They didn’t have a deputy close by and I went and listened.”

A large, lanky man, A.J. had been rebuilding an engine when he bumped the starter, and it had caught his arm and taken his fingers off.

Fling grabbed a hammed and chisel and got the hand out from where it was caught in the engine, and the severed fingers. “It was cold that night and we wrapped the fingers,” he said.

As luck would have it, a plastic surgeon was on hand at the Tallahassee Memorial Hospital emergency room, and he was able to reattach the fingers successfully. “That was probably my first experience with A.J.,” said Fling.

The fire chief said neighbors spoke of hearing an explosion Monday morning after the fire was spotted, which is a typical scenario in such cases.

“A lot of times a small fire in the house will consume the oxygen,” he said. “It builds heat up and will finally blow a window out. When fire gets that additional oxygen it basically explodes.”

Capt. Joe Steadman, with the state fire marshal’s office, said “there was nothing to indicate criminal activity” but would not comment on what may have started the fire before the ongoing investigation was complete.

“I didn’t see anything obvious as to what might have started it,” said Fling, who accompanied investigators on their examination of the destroyed house.

One neighbor said A.J. once told here that he had modified an old modular school classroom into a living area, and added a wooden porch to the front part.

The fire also did minor damage to a neighbor’s home to the north, when the intense heat melted vinyl siding and an adjoining fence.

In addition to the four Lanark Village firefighters, who brought their truck, also responding to the blaze were sheriff’s deputies, Carrabelle police, the state fire marshal’s office and forensic investigators with the state Department of Law Enforcement

Two dogs, a pit bull and a small hound, also died in the blaze.

“You never saw him going down the road where there wasn’t a dog sitting up on the front seat with him,” said Fling.