Northwest Iowa — There were a couple of tense moments and fire departments were paged to two fire calls in northwest Iowa on Monday evening.
At about 10 minutes before 7 p.m., the Orange City Fire Department was paged to the call of a chimney fire at 703 Arizona Avenue Northwest. Fire Chief Dan Roghair says luckily, they didn’t have to spray any water.
A similar situation with no water being sprayed occurred in Sibley just after 7:30 p.m. Assistant Fire Chief, Osceola County dispatcher, and Emergency Management Director Dan Bechler says he was dispatching and received a call from Alliant Energy that one of their people had been called out to check the property at 409 5th Avenue in Sibley. He says the tech called 911 when it appeared that the electric water heater may be on fire. Bechler reports that the fire department arrived to find the element glowing red hot. Apparently, there had been a malfunction or a short in the water heater. He says they made sure power to the unit was turned off and went back in service.
Orange City Fire Chief Roghair says it’s a good reminder to make sure things are working properly. He says people need to make sure if they have a fireplace, to have the chimney cleaned and inspected regularly, as soot and creosote need to be cleaned out. We think of chimney sweeps as an old-fashioned occupation, but if you burn wood, there is just as much need for the services of a chimney sweep today as there was in Victorian times.
