A vacant home in Herculaneum that had served as a training site for firefighters on Tuesday (Feb. 21) went up in flames early the next morning.
Herculaneum Fire Department was dispatched at 1:32 a.m. Feb. 22 to the home at 419 Short St., on property owned by the Doe Run Co., Capt. Kevin Baker said.
They arrived to find “the house fully involved, with flames through the roof,” Baker said. “The floor had collapsed in on the basement and some exterior walls had already fallen in,” he said.
Firefighters fought the fire with hoses in back and front and a deck gun off one of the firetrucks.
“It moves a whole lot more water,” Baker said.
Firefighters had the fire under control in about an hour, but were on the scene until 5 a.m.
The home was slated for demolition soon and was not connected to electricity.
The Crystal City Fire Department conducted training at the house from 5-7:15 p.m. Tuesday. Firefighters built a small fire in the basement to fill the home with smoke and then did a simulation of searching and rescuing a resident.
Baker said the time of the fire makes it highly unlikely that anything connected with the training caused it.
“I am not an investigator, but in my opinion there was too much of a delay for that to be the cause,” he said.
Capt. Patrick Friedmeyer, training officer for the Crystal City Department, said he is 99.9 percent sure that nothing associated with the training caused the fire.
“It was a clean basement, with concrete floors and walls,” he said.
Friedmeyer said a small fire was built with cardboard and straw and then wet down to create smoke. A firefighter with an air pack was stationed in the basement to watch over the fire, which was extinguished after the exercise, Friedmeyer said.
“We poured 500 gallons of water on it, cleaned it up and then used a positive pressure fan to get the smoke out,” he said.
Baker said firefighters went by the building between 10 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. and saw nothing and Friedmeyer said he spoke with neighbors who told him there was no smoke coming from the building at 11 p.m.
“We wanted to see if it was our fault or someone else’s,” Friedmeyer said.
Baker said the cause of the fire is undetermined.
“All the information is not in yet,” he said.
JeffersonCounty fire investigators have been called in, Friedmeyer said.
Firefighters from the Crystal City and the Festus fire departments and the Dunklin Fire Protection District assisted with the fire and firefighters from the Antonia Fire Protection District moved up to Herculaneum’s firehouse to provide coverage.