The fire Oct. 25 that ruined this house at 1008 N. Huron St. in Pierre started on the front deck shown here from cigarette smoking materials and moved up the siding into the attic of the house, Fire Chief Ian Paul told the Capital Journal on Tuesday. The seven-year-old boy who lives there came home from school that day and knew, from fire safety training at school taught by Pierre Volunteer firefighters, that the warm deck and door meant trouble and he ran across the street to get help from a neighbor who called 911. The boy's high school-aged sister was in her room and was taken out by her step-father who is a volunteer firefighter, Chief Paul said. Â (Stephen Lee/Capital Journal)
Lois Van Ash is a grateful great-grandmother who told city leaders Tuesday night what Pierre firefighters taught her seven-year-old great-grandson probably saved his life and his sister’s when his family’s house was wrecked by a recent fire.
Van Ash was accompanied by her husband of 65 years, Gordon, to the Nov. 13 meeting where she read a statement to the City Commission during the public comment period.
She and Gordon have seen lots of good things from the house on Missouri Street where they raised seven children and still live, she said.
But it was what her great-grandson learned recently from city firefighters that makes her especially thankful, she said.
Her great-grandson came home from school Thursday, Oct. 25, only days after firefighters had spoke at his school, Jefferson Elementary, about fire safety. It stuck in his mind, said Van Ash. The boy’s home, at 1008 N. Huron St., was only a long block away from Jefferson, so he walks to and from school.
“He found the deck warm and the front door hot,” she said. “He remembered not to open a warm door … He looked up and saw smoke and ran to a neighbor’s.”
The neighbor called 911 and then called the boy’s mother, who is Lois’s granddaughter. Soon fire trucks and firefighters swarmed the house and put out the fire, as the boy’s family watched from across the street.
“We could be telling a different story tonight, save for this little boy remembering the talk from the fireman,” Lois Van Ash told the Commission. “It’s nice to share some good news.”
Perhaps even more dramatic, the boy’s older sister, a senior at Stanley County High in Fort Pierre, was asleep in her room that afternoon when the boy discovered the fire. Her step-father, one of 55 volunteer firefighters in the Pierre Volunteer Fire Department, arrived at the scene of his own home on fire and brought the girl out, said Lois Van Ash.
“It shook us all up,” she told the Capital Journal after the city commission meeting. “But everyone was all right.”
The firefighters even rescued the family’s two guinea pigs, she said.
City Commissioners said they appreciated the good words from Van Ash.
Pierre Fire Chief Ian Paul was not at the city commission meeting. But he said he appreciates hearing about residents who appreciate what firefighters do, he told the Capital Journal.
The day of the fire, he made the point that he is proud of the men and women who leave their homes and jobs not only for training but whenever the signal comes that someone’s home needs rescue.
Especially it’s good to hear that the fire safety talks put on by firefighters in Pierre’s schools pay off in such good ways, he said. “We go around to all the schools,” Paul said.
He was at the fire that day. “But I didn’t know the story about the little boy feeling the door,” Paul said Tuesday evening. But Paul said he knew that one of the firefighters was the home's resident who escorted his step-daughter out of the family’s house that day. No one was hurt in the fire, Paul said.
The fire marshal’s investigation found the fire started on that very front deck where the boy had felt was too hot, Paul said. Like so many house fires, it started from someone smoking and not making sure the cigarettes were put out, according to Paul.
“It started from smoking materials and worked its way up the siding into the attic.”
That meant the firefighters' attention mainly was on getting water into the attic where smoke was rolling out, including using a chainsaw to cut a hole at the peak of the house front to give access to water hoses.
Firefighters knocked out the fire within about 30 minutes of arriving on scene, Paul said.
He said the boy’s family were renting the house, which is owned by the Rev. Susan Carr, a former Pierre pastor, who lives in a Milwaukee suburb.
 Chief Paul said insurance companies are discussing what will be done with the house.
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