It was a fire that could have destroyed so much more than just the structure of the oldest Church in Delft on Friday November 10th. According to Fire Chief Ben Derickson Windom Fire was called out to a structure fire at 49521 County Road 3 in the town of Delft.
This family dwelling was built in 1949 as the Carson Mennonite Brethren Church. The building measured 84×32 ft with a seating capacity of 350. In 1953 the membership of the church was 164. The Church closed on November 27th in 2005 and in 2006, 1/3 of the proceeds of the closing of the church were given to Tabor College, which used it toward the creation of the Carson Center for Mission, Service and Global Education. In approximately 2019 the building that had been remodeled into a home was purchased by a family of eight and they have lived there since. On the morning of the 10th The owner, Princess Jennifer stated that if it wasn’t for the two early morning hunters that saw the fire and pounded on their doors and windows to wake them all up and get them out of the house, they may not have survived this catastrophe.
Fire Chief Derickson stated at 5:58am Darfur Fire Department was paged to address for a structure fire and were on scene when Derickson first arrived. At 6:20am Windom Fire and Windom Ambulance was also paged. According to Derickson, Darfur Fire passed over Incident Command to Windom Fire Department. A call for Jeffers Fire Department was made to assist. Derickson stated that everybody was out of the house and accounted for, he was told there were five people that lived in this house and had gone to the hospital by personal vehicles. Immediately, the crew started protecting the homes to the north and south of the home that was on fire so it couldn’t start them on fire as well. By 6:41am Fire Chief Derickson stated they had a structural collapse as the roof of the building had burnt through and fell in. There was also a live down power line that feed the house that South Central Electric came to deal with. Derickson explained that in the town of Delft about half of the homes have natural gas and the other half use propane. This home had natural gas and the gas meter had melted so fire crew had a live gas line burning as well that had to get shut off. The gas company was called and when they got on scene the line in the home was shut off but the packing in the shut off had also melted so the gas would not shut off completely, Fire Crews ended up digging the gas line up across the street and pinching it off. According to Derickson, later that day the gas company came back and dug up the line and capped it off. The Minnesota State Fire Marshal was contacted and was requested for help in the investigation.
At 10:15am the Jeffers Fire Department cleared the scene, at 10:39am the Windom Ambulance cleared the scene, and at 10:40am Darfur Fire Department cleared the scene. At 11:45am the State Fire Marshal was on scene and Fire Chief Derickson and the Marshall started the investigation. Windom Fire Department Cleared the scene at 1:42pm. Two Windom Fire trucks were sent back up to the scene at 4:08pm to check for hot spots and to cool the ashes down they returned at 5:23pm. On the 11th, Fire Chief went to inspect scene for hot spots and dispatched a Windom Fire truck back to the scene at 12:10pm to put out hot spots and cool the ashes they were back to the Fire Hall at 2:04pm. According to Fire Chief Derickson, the fire scene will be constantly checked in the upcoming days to make sure there are no hot spots and ashes are cooled. As of now the fire investigation is ongoing.
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The Economic Development Authority of Windom will meet at Noon today in the Windom City Council Chambers.
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The Windom Board of Education will be meeting Tonight at 6:30pm in the Windom City Council Chambers. You can listen live at MediaSB22 on YouTube.
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The Windom Planning Commission will be meeting on Tuesday November 14th at 7pm at Windom City Hall in the City Council Chambers
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The Cottonwood County Board of Commissioners will hold a special meeting on Tuesday November 14th at 9am in the Cottonwood County Courthouse. Agenda items will include contracts for Nyhart and Bridge 17514 Design, the EAW Status Update, Landfill, Purchase Limits, HEO Part-Time Hires, and Buildings
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