Home a complete loss following St. Genevieve house fire

A home in the St. Genevieve area is a complete loss following a house fire over the weekend.  

Tache Fire Chief Allan Rau says they were called to a fire in a mobile home structure with an addition Saturday evening. 

“The furnace filter, it appears, caught fire inside the furnace. The resident put that fire out and placed the filter in their porch and carried on with their business and eventually turned around and saw that their porch was engulfed in flames. They escaped safely out of another exit and called 911 while they were outside their home.” 

Rau says they arrived and were able to attack the fire quickly, but were unable to save the structure. 

“Unfortunately, there was a roof on a roof over top of the mobile home and that fire quickly got in that void space and spread across the entirety of the mobile home. We were able to save a number of items for the family, but the mobile home will be a write off.” 

As with all house fires, Rau notes they contacted the Office of the Fire Commissioner the night of the blaze. 

“I indicated to them what our findings were from talking to the homeowner as well as what we saw, and they made a note of the incident but decided not to come out.” 

Rau says the loss is estimated to be around $250,000. Fortunately, he notes the owners did have the home insured.  

Firefighters were able to extinguish the blaze within about 30 minutes, but Rau notes “it took us a couple hours to do an overhaul of the structure because it did get inside the walls and then that roof cavity. We were there for about three and a half hours in total.”