Firefighters Battle Yet Another Fire In The Heat Of The Day
This garage at 607 8th Ave West was destroyed by fire on Tuesday. No official cause of the fire is yet listed, but a possible electrical short may be to blame.
Oskaloosa, Iowa – The call came in at about a quarter till twelve, reporting a garage fire at 607 8th Ave West.
“We got a good knock down on the fire,” Oskaloosa Fire Chief Neff said of the garage that appears to be a total loss.
“We’re actually kind of lucky today, we had some training going on at the station and had some extra personnel in the station.” Neff said that 12 firefighters were on the scene and that the firefighters had the fire knocked down in the first 8 to 10 minutes.
“With the heat, it made it a little challenging,” Neff said of the warm weather impacting the firefighters. “That’s another reason we ended up bring some extra help in.”
Oskaloosa Fire has been responding to several fire calls lately, the most recent being a Sunday house fire in the Northeast part of town. That fire remains under investigation.
Connie Playle lives next door to 607 8th Ave West and said that her four miniature Dotson dogs, who are normally quiet, began to bark and bay. “So I looked out my window and I seen the glass was shooting out of the garage and everything was pretty loud.”
Playle, on the phone at the time, informed the person on the other end that she needed to hang up right away to call 911. By the time she contacted the 911 center, Playle was already out in the yard, “and the neighbors were trying to push the car, by hand, out of the garage.”
Playle explained that by the time the car was pushed to safety, the fire department was on the scene.
Rhonda Thomas, resident of the home, said that her daughter was in the kitchen. “She yelled at me that the garage was on fire. We came out and it was contained to the two windows.” Her son then grabbed the hose, “and we called 911 and it was just like… going up fast.”
She helped to push her sons car out of danger. “We didn’t have keys in it so we just knocked it out of gear and pushed it out.”
The children’s bikes and a scooters were lost to the flames, but in the end, there were no injuries to report.
