At 9:49 p.m. Sunday, the Sedalia Fire Department received a call about a house fire. By 9:52 the first crews had rushed to 2116 E. Broadway Blvd. to find fire blazing through the roof.
Chris Cantrell is the Senior Pastor at Crossroads Church of God. He was in the parsonage just south of the burning home when he smelled smoke.
“We started walking through our house and then we saw out through the back window flames coming through the roof of the rental house and fire trucks everywhere, smoke billowing down the property towards Ninth Street,” Cantrell told the Democrat on Monday.
Sedalia fire was already on scene, working to extinguish the blaze consuming the wooden structure on Broadway near Madison Avenue.
Deputy Fire Chief Matt Irwin told the Democrat on Monday that fire was in the basement or ground floor area on arrival and “we had fire basically through the roof.”
Irwin said the negative 7-degree temperature and forceful flames made calling extra firefighters necessary.
“It was miserable,” Irwin said. “We ended up calling seven additional personnel so including myself we had 18 personnel on scene.”
The fire was difficult to extinguish, Irwin said.
“The fire crews tried to make entry into the house. They started an aggressive interior attack to try to put the fire out,” he explained. “The stairway going to the second floor became compromised, so we had to pull crews out. We couldn't get into the second floor so we kind of did an exterior attack until we could get the fire knocked down a little bit and then we basically place ladders inside the house with stairwells were went back upstairs and were able to extinguish the fire.”
SFD finally cleared the fire at 2 a.m. The young couple who had been renting the home had already escaped the fire uninjured with their two dogs.
Firefighters tried to conduct an initial investigation of the home but say the evidence was pretty much destroyed.
“After speaking with the homeowners there were a lot of space heaters that they had plugged in, so barring any other evidence that comes up it looks like it was an accidental overload,” Irwin stated.
Crossroads Church of God owned the white frame home.
“They had been they had been living there for a year,” said Cantrell. “Great, great renters. They’ve lost everything they had and did not have renter’s insurance so we're just trying to be there for them and help them get their feet back on the ground.”
Donations for the couple may be given by calling Crossroads Church of God at 660-827-2258 or by reaching out to Crossroads Church of God Sedalia on Facebook.
