BILLINGS — A fire-damaged home in Billings has sat with broken windows and charred siding for 15 months, leaving neighbors frustrated as they wait for a cleanup that still hasn't come.
For over a year, Tabitha Brackney has looked at the broken windows and charred siding left behind at 811 North 23rd.
See the current state of the house here:
"For the longest time it smelt like smoke around here because of the house," Brackney said.
"It's devastating to look at. I mean, I would hate to have anybody's home burn up," Brackney said.
The home caught fire around 4:30 in the morning in July 2025 due to a cigarette butt, leaving behind the damage Brackney still sees today.
"I wish they would fix it. I wish they would do something to it. It's a huge eyesore for the whole community here," Brackney said.
Brackney isn't the only neighbor with a front-row view. Fire Station One sits directly across the street.
"Normally that stuff doesn't happen across the street from the fire station, but it's not impossible either," Rick Schauer said.
Battalion Chief Rick Schauer says the home is so close to the station that when the call came in, the tenants were banging on the station's garage door. It allowed crews to respond in seconds.
"As soon as we rolled the garage doors up, the whole front of it was pretty involved. There was a lot of fire basically from one side of the house to the other," Schauer said.
But the process of cleaning up the property has taken significantly longer.
"They've had like 15, 20 different vehicles on the property, and they seem like they're fixing it, but I don't see much being done," Brackney said.
Tina Hoeger of city code enforcement says that kind of timeline isn't unusual. The city often gives owners months to work through insurance and figure out a plan.
"We try to show folks some grace because the end goal is to have them bring it into compliance, to get it restored and get it back into usable space," Hoeger said.
Hoeger says a case for a nuisance structure was opened in March, and the owner has since applied for a remodel permit, but the city is still waiting on tangible plans for that remodel.
"He has until the end of the month to get those in. But it is his intention to remodel the place," Hoeger said.
If that doesn't happen, Hoeger says code enforcement's next step could be court. MTN News reached out to the property owner but did not hear back.
And for neighbors like Brackney, that timeline can't come soon enough.
"I understand that budgets are tight. It's 2026, everybody's hurting from money, but at the same time, we want our properties to look decent," Brackney said.
Fire officials say the blaze is part of a larger problem. Billings Fire Marshal Jaime Fender says improperly discarded smoking materials are a frequent cause of structure fires.
"Billings Fire Department, we run on quite a few fires that are a result of improperly discarded smoking materials. And it's not just a specific time of year, it's year round," Fender said.
Fender says cigarettes can smolder far longer than people expect.
"Those cigarettes have the ability to start something on fire given the right circumstances for quite a bit longer than people realize...it's good caution to always discard your cigarettes properly," Fender said.
