Early morning fire ravages downtown Keota

    Several businesses in Keota caught fire Saturday morning. The former lumberyard was burnt to the ground and two brick structures, Bermel Insurance and the former Keota Locker, were pushed down after suffering significant fire damage. There were no fatalities or injuries reported. The cause of the fire has not yet been determined.

    Ryan Sieren, the incident commander of the Keota Fire Department, received a page at 4:17 a.m. Saturday morning alerting him of the fire. He and other firefighters arrived at the lumberyard, which was already fully engulfed in flames.

    ?There was fire shooting out the roof of the building,? said Sieren.

    Sieren said the first thing the firefighters did was a search-and-rescue. They did not find anyone in the building.

    The fire at the lumberyard then spread to Bermel Insurance, which is just three feet from the structure that was on fire. The fire spread to a two-story storage unit that was once the Keota meat locker. Keota Fire Chief Mike Detweiler decided to demolish those two buildings that afternoon because they had become unstable.

     The fire crews suffered a setback when a water main broke, reducing the flow of water to fight the fire. Detweiler said that the water main leak, coupled with the vast amount of water the firefighters were spraying on the fire, nearly drained the water tower. The firefighters then went to using only their water tankers. Water was temporarily turned off for part of the city. City personnel arrived on the scene and fixed the water main break.

    Westendorf Costume Emporium suffered smoke damage but did not catch fire. Miller Autobody did not suffer fire damage but was damaged when the former meat locker building collapsed. Bill Miller owns both Miller Autobody and the former lumberyard building. He said that when that building collapsed, it took out his gas line and gas meter.

    The Keota Fire Department was not alone in its efforts to extinguish the blaze. It was assisted by seven other local fire departments, namely those from Keswick, North Keokuk County (North English), Wellman, Washington (which brought tankers and its aerial truck), Richland, Ollie and Sigourney.     

     Miller rented space in the lumberyard to store campers and automobiles, which were all lost in the fire. There was a fitness center in the lumberyard run by Jen and Alan Weber, which is now gone. 

    ?I got a call at 4:30 in the morning,? said Miller. ?I went down there and was able to get a few things out of the building before the smoke got to me. The firefighters wouldn?t let us go back in for safety reasons.?

    When Miller arrived, the southeast corner of the lumberyard was on fire. Miller said he allowed students to store things there for the Keota post-prom. He said there was no electricity to that part of the building.

    ?We thought they were going to get it contained there,? said Miller. ?But that didn?t happen because of all the old wood, and the direction of the wind made it worse.?

    The meat locker building caught fire, and after it burned for awhile, one of its walls collapsed and struck Miller?s Autobody. Then, when the building collapsed, the top of it hit Miller?s building again. Miller said he lost one of his furnaces in the building, and that he?ll have to do some repair work to the east side and the roof of his business.

    ?I can still do some work in here today,? said Miller on Monday morning.

    Miller said he cannot thank the firefighters enough for what they did that morning.

    ?All of the departments worked well together,? said Miller. ?They did everything they could to save what they could. They did a phenomenal job.?

    Don Bermel owns Bermel Insurance. He was awoken at about 4:30 a.m. by a call from Larry Sanders, alerting him to the fire at the lumberyard. By the time Bermel arrived on the scene, the fire had spread to his building. Bermel lost nearly all of his belongings in the building.

    ?I just hated that I lost all those computers and insurance stuff,? he said. ?I had some recordings with a friend of mine who has passed away. When my grandson was 3 years old, he sang happy birthday to me, and that was on the recorder, too. I don?t have anything this morning, but it didn?t hit me so hard Saturday as it did today (Monday).?

    Bermel said he has another location where he can conduct business. He has an office in Wellman called Hawkeye Midwestern Realty. His business partner Nick Swanson works out of the office, and now Swanson will be joined by Bermel.

    Bermel also housed a laundromat in his building and apartments upstairs. No one was living in the apartments at the time, but the laundromat received regular use.

    ?I just got machines to go in the laundromat, but they all went up in smoke,? said Bermel. ?I was in that building when 100 mph winds came through. I thought that building would stand forever.?

For more, see our Dec. 6 print edition.