Woman Dies in Mobile Home Fire

A 39-year-old Santa Paula woman died early Tuesday after fire engulfed her mobile home.

Rhonda Gayle Yount was found inside the home on Ferris Drive near Telegraph Road after the fire was put out about 6:15 a.m., said Sandi Wells, a Ventura County Fire Department spokeswoman.

Yount’s cat also died in the fire, which was ruled accidental.

Authorities have not determined the cause of the blaze, but said Yount was a smoker. She died from inhaling smoke and carbon monoxide, said Craig Stevens, senior deputy medical examiner.

Two mobile homes and one home that were fewer than 10 feet from Yount’s residence escaped damage and no other injuries were reported. The blaze caused about $9,000 in property damage, Wells said.

“It’s just incredible that they are so close, but the firefighters were able to keep [the fire] contained to just this one,” she said.

One of Yount’s neighbors, who declined to give his name, said he smelled smoke as he was getting ready for work before 6 a.m. When he went outside, he could see fire through the front windows of the mobile home.

He said he forced the door open and saw Yount in the corner of the bathroom, but the flames made it impossible to reach her.

“It was just too hot,” he said. “The whole thing was engulfed.”

He placed a wooden ladder against one of the windows, but Yount would not climb down it, the neighbor said.

Two passers-by also urged her to grab the ladder, and one of them punched his hand through a window.

“I think she was too scared,” the neighbor said.

The neighbor, who has lived next door to Yount for about three years, described her as a kind woman who loved taking care of her cat. She is survived by a brother in Fillmore, authorities said.

Yount was the third person to die in a structure fire in Ventura County since January 2001, when a 77-year-old woman was killed in a blaze in her mobile home in Thousand Oaks.

In December, an elderly woman suffered burns in a house fire in Simi Valley and later died from the injuries.