EVERETT, Wash. (AP) -- A man who rejected the urging of a friend that he clear the trash that made it almost impossible to move about his home has died in a smoky house fire.
Firefighters made two or three searches through a smoldering floor-to-ceiling melange of newspapers, boxes and other material Sunday afternoon before finding the man, identified by friends and neighbors as Arthur Hopkins, 84, Fire Marshal Warren Burns said.
More than an hour after getting the flames under control, firefighters were still shoveling piles of smoldering debris through the living room window into the yard and dousing it with water.
Damage was confined to the front part of the house, where a friend and neighbor, Phil Cook, said Hopkins had a wood stove for heating. Burns said the fire was caused by a space heater that ignited debris, and that Hopkins apparently was overcome by smoke.
Hopkins had significant real estate holdings in this town about 25 miles north of Seattle, including a historic apartment building that he was restoring from fire damage two years ago.
Despite occasional suggestions to get rid of the junk, ``he flat out refused,'' Cook said.
He said he was leaving home two houses down the street when he noticed smoke coming through the window, made a U-turn and saw a police officer trying to enter the burning house.
Junk filled the basement so tightly that firefighters were unable to open the basement door, and the garage was crammed full of wood, boxes and other debris over an old car.
Cook said he occasionally visited Hopkins but found little room to walk inside the home.
``He stopped using a garbage can about 10 years ago,'' shortly after the death of Hopkins' mother, who had lived with him, Cook said.
