No injuries as fire guts 4 mobile homes

MONTEZUMA - No one was injured in a fire on Saturday night that destroyed four mobile homes on Howard Drive in Montezuma, according to Montezuma Fire Chief Lee Braun.

The structure fire was reported by a neighbor at about 9:30 p.m. Saturday, Braun said.

"When the first truck pulled up, we had two of the trailers that were fully engulfed," he said. "The outside two were on fire. They weren't fully engulfed yet. We did an initial attack on those, but with the trailers, they go up so fast. So then we basically went to defensive and just saved the next ones (trailers). We had basically four on fire whenever we got there and we lost four trailers. We stopped it from spreading any further, but once the two on the outside were already burning, but we just couldn't get them out before they spread."

No one was injured during the fire and Braun said the properties were summer homes.

"Three of them were actually house trailers and then one was a travel trailer," he said.

Based on a preliminary investigation, Braun and other firefighters concluded that the blaze began in the trailer on Lot 22.

He did not know the property owners' names or have an estimate of the monetary losses as of Sunday night. Crews were on scene for about five hours.

The cause of the fire is undetermined. The state fire marshal's office is assisting in the investigation.

"The state fire marshal's office is supposed to come up tomorrow around 9 a.m.," Braun said. "We're going to go out and basically go through what happened, all that kind of stuff and hopefully get with some of the homeowners via telephone I'm assuming."

Around 30 firefighters responded to the fire with 10 to 11 apparatuses. Montezuma Fire was assisted by Coldwater, St. Marys Township, New Bremen and Chickasaw fire departments. Mercer County Emergency Response Volunteers assisted with traffic control.