An early Tuesday fire destroyed an annexation area mobile homethat firefighters say was already lost when they arrived on thescene.

Brookhaven Fire Department Capt. Billy Beeson said the mobilehome at 909 Ozark Lane caught fire sometime before BFD received thecall at 2:47 a.m.

“The walls and roof had fallen in when we got there,” hesaid.

Fire department reports said the home belonged to Terry Nations,who wasn’t home at the time of the incident. Firefighters initiallyworried that he might be inside since his locked vehicle was at thescene, but he was later located at a friend’s home.

“The neighbor said it burned up pretty quick,” Beeson said aboutthe mobile home.

Beeson explained that the neighbor had seen Nations earlier inthe evening and had not seen his car leave, which raisedconcerns.

Officials said the home was a total loss on structure andcontents.

Since the home was too far gone to save at the time of the call,firefighters kept water on the blaze to cool it down, but ran intotrouble since there are no fire hydrants in the immediate area.They shuttled water to the scene by sending the trucks to thenearest hydrant.

Beeson said under circumstances where the home was not alreadydestroyed, they would have called for a tanker truck from a nearbyvolunteer department. He said the fire department has been relievedthat there has not been a lot of activity in the new areas that arewaiting on fire loop coverage.

The city has five years to install water and sewer services inthe new areas of the city under annexation guidelines. Cityofficials have said that is a priority as the funds come availableand when budget time comes around.

BFD also had a false alarm call at Kingsborough Apartments onSilvercross Drive Tuesday, where an air conditioner hadmalfunctioned and was causing a smoke smell.

“They called it in as a structure fire,” Beeson said. “But whenwe got there the fan motor in an outside unit was smoking. They’dhad trouble with it before, but apparently the heat yesterday justoverloaded it.”