By Mike Grant
Washington Times-Herald
MONTGOMERY, Ind. — A weekend fire leveled a large retail business located just outside of Montgomery.
The Montgomery Volunteer Fire Department reports The Bargain Barn, located at 8616 E. CR 400 N., was destroyed in a blaze Sunday that was first reported at 1:36 a.m.
Montgomery firefighters responded within 10 minutes of the original alarm, but Assistant Fire Chief Dwayne Murphy says the building was full of fire on arrival.
“We got called to a fire alarm,” said Murphy. “Most of the time the alarms are nothing, but this one was something. When we pulled up, there was fire filling half of the building, coming out of the windows and part of the roof had already caved in.”
Murphy says firefighters quickly put in place a strategy to limit any damage to surrounding buildings.
“We knew right off the bat that we were not going to save the main building,” he said. “There was a pretty good sized building behind it and we focused on trying to keep the fire from spreading to it, and we managed to do that.”
Firefighters spent six hours putting out the blaze.
“We had firefighters from all but two departments in the county,” said Murphy. “We have the city’s aerial come in and set up on the east side of the building so that it could get water on parts of the fire we couldn’t get to with our hose lines.”
The building was located miles from the nearest fire hydrant. Officials report they used more than 100,000 gallons of water to put out the blaze.
“Water supply is always a problem,” said Murphy. “We were four miles from Montgomery, and three-and-a-half miles from the hydrant at Dinkys.
“At first we used water from Montgomery, but then we realized we were taking water out faster than the pumps could put it back into the tower, so we stopped there and moved to Dinkys. We did run out of water a couple of times, but I don’t think that really impacted our ability to finish putting out the fire.”
Water supply apparatus
The cause of the fire is undetermined and will probably remain that way. Officials say they were not even able to determine where the fire might have started.
“We don’t know the cause and probably will never know the cause because we had to get excavators in there to start pulling metal out of the way so we could save the building in the back,” said Murphy.
“I don’t think we will call in the fire marshal because he won’t be able to tell us anything, because we had to bring in those excavators to move the metal so we could get to the fire.”
The Bargain Barn was described as being the same kind of metal building that fills up much of rural Daviess County. That design and the size added to the difficulty in putting the blaze out.
“It was basically a pole barn. Stick built with metal covering it. When the roof began to fall, the metal came down and then covered all of the material that was on fire,” said Murphy. “There was an excavator on site, because some work was being done there, so we called them and they came in and helped move out the metal and let us get to the fire. Without them it would have been an even bigger mess.”
In all, about 50 firefighters responded to fight the blaze. One was overcome by the heat and was treated at the scene. Another had a back strain and was out for a while.
“It was such a big building that we had to set up two commands. One on each side of the building,” said Murphy.
“The fire departments all worked together really well. The place was so large you couldn’t see what was going on. You needed extra eyes.”
While firefighters were unable to save the main building they did manage to limit the damage.
“The building we saved was a pretty good-sized one. They had just added it in the last couple of years. It was for storage and was full of stuff for the store,” said Murphy.
The building was owned by Marlin and Rosie Yoder .
Officials say cleanup is already underway.
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