Sibley, Iowa– A garage and its valuable contents were destroyed in a fire on Sunday, September 11, 2016 in Sibley.
According to Sibley Fire Chief Ken Huls, about 3:34 PM, the Sibley Fire Department was called to the report of garage fire at the home of Dave and Ilea Herbert at 944 Fifth Place.
The chief says the fire department saw the garage was fully engulfed in flame as they approached the scene and the house was on fire too.
You may remember we at KIWA have featured Dave Herbert on a couple of occasions. He is the US distributor for the Freego brand of Segway-like scooters, which are made in Hong Kong. He also was a model airplane and drone hobbyist, and we talked with him about drones in July of this year. Those stories are available by clicking on these links.
Chief Huls reports that Dave Herbert was burned when he opened the garage door from the outside. His hair and shirt caught on fire. A neighbor who had run across the street to alert the Herberts to the fire patted out the fire on Herbert, says Huls. He says Herbert’s wife Ilea was taken to Osceola Community Hospital for smoke inhalation, but Dave declined treatment. Huls says one firefighter was also taken in after a small fall.
Huls says a minivan and a boat on a trailer were outside the garage, and they were destroyed along with the contents of the garage, which included but was not limited to another minivan, an antique Ford Model A car, four Freego scooters, between 40 and 70 model airplanes, and Herbert’s former military ID. The garage was destroyed and the west side of the house sustained severe damage, but may be repairable according to Huls. He says firefighters did save two cats.
The fire department was assisted by the Ashton and Little Rock Fire Departments and the Sibley Ambulance crew.
Huls says the cause of the fire is undetermined but he says it started in the main area of the garage floor. Chief Huls reports that the garage and contents were destroyed, and the house was heavily damaged. He says the estimate of damage at this point is between $275,000 and $300,000.
He says they used 60,000 gallons of water, some of it with foam concentrate to fight the fire.
Picture courtesy Sibley Fire Department/Ken Huls
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Earlier story:
Sibley, Iowa — According to initial on-scene reports, three fire departments fought a house and garage fire on Sunday afternoon, September 11, 2016 in Sibley.
The reports indicate that the fire was south of the Sibley/Ocheyedan High School track in Sibley. We are told that firefighters from Sibley, Ashton, and Little Rock were on scene for most of the afternoon. They say the initial fire call went out in the 3 PM hour.
