Northwest Iowa — A couple of northwest Iowa fire departments were paged over the weekend and were met with smoke when they arrived.
Inwood firefighters were paged to the report of smoke in a house at 112 East Madison Street in Inwood in the 10:00 a.m hour on Friday, June 26th. Fire Chief Troy Van Beek reports that they arrived to find a smoke-filled home.
After some investigation, he says they found a melted dehumidifier. He says it was only smoldering, so they didn’t need to spray any water on it. He tells us they suspect an electrical malfunction.
Van Beek says there was some smoke damage to the home, which will need to be cleaned before it is liveable again. He tells us firefighters ventilated the smoke.
No injuries were reported. Firefighters were on the scene for about an hour and a half, according to Van Beek.
Then on Saturday, the Hartley Fire Department was paged to the report of an oven fire at 210 North Third Avenue East in Hartley. The call came in about midnight Saturday night.
According to Fire Chief Brad Meendering, a law enforcement officer and a firefighter that lived nearby had put out the fire with an extinguisher before the fire department arrived, but the house was “full of smoke,” he says.
Firefighters ventilated the smoke before packing up.
Meendering tells us that the occupants had warmed up leftover pizza in the oven, still in the box earlier, and had forgotten about it in there. Later, they were preheating the oven to make french fries, and the box ignited.
Meendering says there was some smoke damage in the home, but the fire seemed to have been contained to the oven. He says they were on the scene for about a half an hour.
