Crews called in for house fire

A three-alarm fire Friday night in a vacant single story house at 415 W. Harper St. is being investigated by the Missouri State Fire Marshal.

The first crew of Poplar Bluff firefighters arrived on scene within three and a half minutes after being dispatched and spent two hours and 41 minutes fighting the fire and cleaning up at the scene.

They used 5,000 gallons of water to put out the fire in the 960 square feet building.

According to Battalion Chief Kevin Edgar’s report, the crew arrived to find heavy smoke showing from all sides of the structure.

“We deployed a hand line and made our way to the D side of the structure where flames had started coming out of the windows,” Edgar said.

They quickly knocked down the fire on that side and made their way back to the side where they forced open the front door and made entry into the structure to attack the fire, Edgar’s report stated. A second crew began attacking the fire from the third side of the structure.

“The fire was under control a short time later at which time crews began extinguishing any remaining spot fires and embers,” Edgar said. “The flooring in one corner of the structure had collapsed into the crawl space which made overhaul take quite a bit of time to perform.”

Two off duty crews were called back in to assist with the fire and clean up.

The 13 firefighters on the scene were Edgar, Cade Lowe, Eric Mierisch, Steven Burkhead, Adam Yeley, Brad Jones, Jeremy Downing, Jeffrey Hale, Jamie Watson, Justin Maddock, Joshua Buhler, Dustin Graves and Cameron Rose.