Firefighters continue working house fire in northern Boone County Friday morning
Ryan Shiner
BOONE COUNTY, Mo. (KMIZ)
Firefighters returned to a house fire early Friday morning after battling the flames throughout the night. Firefighters initially responded to a house fire on Thursday night in northern Boone County, just south of Highway 124, between Harrisburg and Hallsville.
The Boone County Fire Protection District was called at 9:30 p.m. to a home in the 14300 block of North Old Number 7. The fire appeared to increase in size around 10:40 p.m. Around 40 firefighters responded to the fire and there were no casualties, according to Boone County Fire Protection District Assistant Chief Gale Blomenkamp.
Fire crews left the scene around 5:15 a.m. Friday and returned just before 6 a.m. to find more smoke coming from the home.
Before fire crews left the scene, crews were battling hot spots for several hours, according to Blomenkamp. He says they believed they had most of the hotspots put out, but there was one area that was a concern and would be monitored.
Blomenkamp spoke to ABC 17 News on the scene, explaining how difficult it was to put out this house fire due to limited water supply from a lack of hydrants in the area.
“Water supply up here is limited and so we were using a tanker shuttle operation to keep water flowing to the fire. At one point we had 6 tankers bringing water and we actually had a pause in our firefighting operations because we did lose water supply at that point,” said Blowmenkamp.
Blomenkamp said crews were able to get their water trucks refilled and back to the scene and were able to maintain operations from that point forward.
Blomenkamp further explained the difficulty to fighting this house fire, expressing that it was similar to dealing with four separate structure fires. “A lot of separate hidden attic spaces and fake dormers that are on the front of the structure. Those are very difficult to extinguish,” said Bloemnkamp. “The roof was on fire by the time we really arrived and got to work. So when the roof’s on fire, it’s hard to put that out from below.”
An ABC 17 News reporter on scene when the firefighters returned saw eight Boone County Fire Protection District trucks, one Columbia Fire Department ladder truck and a Boone Health EMS ambulance.
The cause of the fire is still under investigation.
Flames were still coming out of the home at 10:30 p.m. An ABC 17 News photographer saw three firetrucks, seven service vehicles and an EMS vehicle.
This story is developing. Check back for updates.