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Cause Of Fire That Destroyed A Building At A Spirit Lake Business Going Down As Undetermined

May 14, 2024 Steve Schwaller

(Spirit Lake)– The cause of a fire early this (Tues.) morning that destroyed a building at Great Lakes Marine in Spirit Lake is going down as undetermined. Spirit Lake Fire Chief Pat Daly…

“We ended up having to get Sam Wedeking to come in with his excavator and pull the old roof down so we could get in to see. We had two fire marshals here. We can’t come up with a cause, just way too much damage in there so we’re just going to kind of rule it as undetermined right now.”

Daly says they were called to the scene around 3:15 am and found the fire already well underway. He says they then called for assistance from the Arnolds Park-Okoboji and Superior Fire Departments. The Spirit Lake Fire Department was on the scene a total of eight hours. Daly says the fire posed several challenges…

“It’s a wood structure with a tin roof and once that gets going we don’t go in because that can come right down on top of ‘ya. When we got there it was already out the eves in the back and so we knew it had a pretty good start on it and the idea was to just get water on it and keep everybody back and keep them safe. There was fuel and stuff in the back, we had a few explosions from that but nobody got hurt so that was a good thing.”

Daly says the dollar amount of the loss will likely be substantial…

“There was an older car in there, there was an old antique wood boat in there. He had three or four boats in the front so I’m sure the dollars are going to go up.”

Daly adds they were able to contain the blaze to the one structure. He expressed his appreciation to everyone who assisted on the scene.

A previous report indicated the business was no longer active when, in fact, it is.

UPDATE: The Spirit Lake Fire Department was called back to the scene around 4:30 to extinguish some hot spots that flared up. They were there just under an hour.

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