Bartley house fire teaches lesson about closing interior doors

Bartley firefighter Jim Foster Friday morning douses a persistent flame in the attic of what was once his grandmother Lydia Hart’s and his uncle James “Bud” White’s house on main street in Bartley, across the street north of the city park

Connie Jo Discoe/McCook Gazette

BARTLEY, Neb. — The kitchen of a house destroyed in a fire in Bartley Friday morning is what fire chief Dusty Morris calls a “textbook perfect” example of the wisdom of shutting interior doors at night.

Except for a little smoke damage on the ceiling, “the kitchen is untouched,” Morris said late Friday morning. A person could go in there and fix bacon and eggs, he said, explaining that doors into the room had been shut and the room was largely untouched by a fire that raged through the rest of home.

It’s a good example of the rationale behind closing doors, especially bedroom doors when the family goes to bed at night, Morris said. The rest of the two-story, white-frame house wasn’t so lucky, with most of the first and second floors now piled up in the basement.

Firefighters from Bartley, Indianola, Cambridge and Red Willow Western fire departments responded to the fire, a couple of them resting in a lawn swing after the fire was out.

Connie Jo Discoe/McCook Gazette

The fire was discovered about 4:30 a.m., Morris said, and his fire trucks, just a block away, were almost immediately on the scene. Firefighters found the house engulfed in smoke.

The house is occupied, he said, but no one was home at the time of the fire. It is owned by Mindy Relaford, according to neighbors.

Morris said it was nearly impossible to fight the fire from inside. “It was not safe to send men inside. There are so many walls … the rooms are so closed off,” he said. “We couldn’t get upstairs because the stairs were burned.”

Morris requested an investigation by a Nebraska fire marshal. Ryan Sylvester said he would examine the scene for burn patterns, trying to determine the origin of the fire and potential ignition sources. “I’ll identify all possible sources, and then try my level best to eliminate each one, leaving me with one I can’t rule out,” he said.

The house was totaled, with charred wood, furniture and deep water in the cellar basement.

Sylvester said he gathered a source of the debris that will be examined at the crime lab, and he talked to witnesses. His report on the possible cause of the fire will be available, generally, in about three weeks.

Sylvester said the Red Willow County Sheriff’s Office is assisting in the investigation.

Relaford’s dogs were removed from the scene uninjured; a friend gathered up the cat.