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CEDAR HILLS -- A Cedar Hills family will be returning from vacation to the burned shell of their home. While the owners of the home near 10200 North and 4390 West were out of town a contractor was doing some work in the home Monday.
The flames started on the back of the house and that's where neighbors say the remodeling was happening.
"I heard screaming," said neighbor Holly Richard. "It looked orange outside. The back of the house already was in flames."
Richards lives next door to the home and says by the time she got outside the fire was breaking through windows at the front of the house.
Other neighbor quickly noticed the fire as well.
"I opened the front door and could see flames coming from the other side of the house," said neighbor Brian Kofford.
Fire crews say the home is a complete loss.
Neighbor Steve Andrus said the home was, "Basically gutted in 20 minutes. It just collapsed on itself."
Firefighters came from nearby cities and used three towers to fight the fire.
"The truckers were coming out of highland and alpine," said Brian Hodson with Lone Peak Fire Department. "So their response time was a little longer."
"It took quite a while for any fire trucks to arrive and them to get the hoses hooked up and everything," said neighbor Lauralyn Kofford. "It was a process and within a half an hour, that house was totally gone."
Fire officials say the response time was eight minutes, but neighbors say it seemed longer.
There is a fire station right up the street from the home, but it is not a manned station.
When the first firefighters arrived, they found the house fully involved. It took crews about a half-hour to bring the flames completely under control, said Lone Peak Fire District Chief Brad Freeman.
A family of nine — a father, mother and seven children — had been in California the past few days visiting relatives and were not home at the time of the fire.
A cause for the fire was still being investigated Tuesday. One angle being investigated was a work crew had been in the home Monday remodeling the entire lower level, Freeman said.
Story compiled with contributions from Courtney Orton and Pat Reavy.
