East St. Louis house destroyed in overnight fire
A woman and her four children were not at their East St. Louis residence when it caught on fire shortly after midnight Thursday morning.
But their two-story, wood-framed home was completely destroyed.
The fire at 1712 Bond Avenue came was reported at 12:39 a.m. East St. Louis Assistant Fire Chief George McClellan said when crews stepped from the engine house at 1700 Central Ave., they could already see the flames.
A 10-man crew was on scene for nearly three hours, but was not able to determine a cause of the fire. There were no injuries.
“We went inside a couple of times, but the fire was too intense for us to ascertain a cause of fire,” McClellan said. “We attempted to suppress the fire, but it got into the walls and went through the roof. We couldn’t put it out. We called in a ladder truck.”
McClellan said residents of the house arrived home about 30-45 minutes after the fire started. The woman was in the process of moving and didn’t know what happened, he said.
The Red Cross provided some assistance for the family, McClellan said.
Hours earlier, East St. Louis firefighters were at 21st and Martin Luther King Drive, tending to a fire in a vacant structure. McClellan said the department was alerted to the fire at about 9:40 and worked until 12:45 a.m. to put it out.
“The back of the house was fully engulfed,” McClellan said.
This story was originally published April 2, 2020 at 12:52 PM.
