Fire destroys home on Prairie Street
By Correne Martin
A vacation home at 820 N. Prairie St., in Prairie du Chien, caught fire early Tuesday morning and is a total loss, according to Fire Chief Jeff Boughton. Yet, nobody was home when it happened, so there were no injuries and no loss of life. The adjacent homes were undamaged.
“It was fully engulfed when we got there,” he stated.
The call came in to the Prairie du Chien Fire Department about 12:30 a.m. Ablaze was an old trailer house with two garage additions, owned by a couple from Chicago. Five Prairie du Chien fire trucks were dispatched, and the Bridgeport and Rural Prairie du Chien Fire Department was called in for mutual aid. They sent three trucks to the scene, Boughton said.
Rescue personnel used a backhoe from Rickleff Plumbing and Heating to pull the structure apart, in dispersing the fire. “The walls had collapsed and the roof pancaked on top,” the chief noted.
Boughton met with the homeowners Tuesday to investigate the property in determining a cause of the fire. Wednesday morning, he still knew no cause and said the investigation is ongoing.