A burned house at 47 Rockledge Lane in Saranac Lake is seen mid-afternoon Tuesday. (Enterprise photo — Lou Reuter)

SARANAC LAKE — Ashes from a wood stove had been put in a metal bucket, which was sitting in a metal wagon parked outside on the ground, up against the front porch. The bucket wasn’t covered. It was a windy day. Somehow, perhaps egged on by the wind, flames sprang up from the ash bucket in the middle of the night. The flames spread to the porch, and from there to the house.

That is what Essex County fire investigators believe caused a fire early Monday morning that killed Carol Omar, the 77-year-old woman who lived by herself in the cottage at 47 Rockledge Lane, overlooking Moody Pond.

Omar worked at Adirondack Correctional Facility in Ray Brook and had been a teacher in the New York state prison system for 24 years. The state Department of Corrections and Community Services issued a statement to the Enterprise Monday mourning her loss.

Friends and family members declined to talk to the Enterprise about Omar’s life. She was a private person who would not want the attention, they said.

Max Thwaits, deputy director of Essex County Emergency Services, led the fire investigation at the scene.

The ashes may not have been freshly scooped from the wood stove insert in Omar’s fireplace.

“There were ashes in the wood stove, so they were no ashes taken out recently,” Thwaits said Tuesday.

He recommended putting ashes in a covered metal container and keeping it away from one’s residence.

Omar herself called the fire in to 911 shortly before 2 a.m. Monday, telling the dispatcher that her front door was on fire, county Emergency Services Director Don Jaquish. Presumably, that meant she couldn’t exit the house that way, and she apparently tried to go out the back door — but it was obstructed by a dryer.

Thwaits said the dryer appeared to be new. It was not plugged in or operational, and still had blue tape on it. He wasn’t sure whether it was bigger than her old dryer or what, but where it was positioned made it so the back door wouldn’t open.

“That’s where we found her was just inside the back door, so it appears she attempted to leave the back of the residence,” Thwaits said.

Volunteer firefighters from the Saranac Lake, Paul Smiths-Gabriels and Lake Placid departments responded and forced open the back door, moving the dryer in the process. They took Omar out the back door and started medical treatment with help from the Saranac Lake Volunteer Rescue Squad, but it was too late. Essex County Coroner Jay Heald, of Elizabethtown, responded and pronounced Omar dead at the scene. Her body was taken to Champlain Valley Physicians Hospital in Plattsburgh, where an autopsy was conducted Tuesday morning. Heald referred questions to State Police, which had provided no update on the cause of death as of Tuesday afternoon.

The fire completely destroyed the small front porch’s deck and railing and the roof over the front door, leaving the front steps and their railing intact. The front door, roof and outside of the house sustained heavy burn damage.

The two-bedroom cottage was built in the early 1900s. Essex County property records show Omar bought it in 2018.