“We’ll Try To Build Back”: Amish Help Fight Fire — But Missouri Variety Store Is A Total Loss (UPDATE: Days Later, The Store Is Already Going Back Up)

Despite Amish efforts to aid firefighters in extinguishing the blaze, a variety store in the Canton, Missouri Amish settlement burned to the ground yesterday evening. As reported by Michele McCormack in Muddy River News:

LEWIS Co., Mo. — Just after 5 p.m. Thursday, a fire erupted at the Amish Variety Store along Highway 81 just north of Canton, Mo.

“This is a bad time of day for us, just because we’re short members. Everybody’s getting home from work,” La Grange Fire Chief Henry Gunsauls Jr. said. “Arriving on scene, they first saw the fire coming from the eaves and the vent.

“I know they say when they got here, about the time they pulled the first line, it flashed and, basically, engulfed. Fully involved.”

The building is a complete loss.

The place was called Rustic Ridge Variety Store. No doubt it had a wide-ranging assortment of goods, from housewares to books to clothing to foods, as is typical for such stores (see this recent example of one). The fire chief described the business as being “pretty full”.

Grateful For Aid In The Face Of Loss

Remarkably, but not surprisingly, store owner Eli Yutzy was grateful, and at least according to the report, sounded upbeat in talking about what happened: “They done real good,” Yutzy said. “A lot of Amish helped.”

On that note, a report at WGEM suggests the Amish even had their own crew on the scene:

The La Grange Fire Department, Canton Fire Department, Western Lewis County Fire Protection District, Ewing R4, Monticello and an Amish fire department were all working the scene.

The Amish are heavily-involved in volunteer firefighting in some places, most notably Lancaster County (but in other places too). On the other hand, the depiction at the Muddy River News report is of more informal assistance:

Property owner Eli Yutzy said his family and other Amish from the area volunteered to help first responders until reinforcements arrived.

Regardless, it was a team effort, although unfortunately for naught. As another recent fire at an Amish place underscored, putting out blazes in rural areas has its own challenges:

In addition to the timing of the fire and being short-staffed initially, the location is remote, meaning they had to truck in their own water.

“Being out as far as we are, the water supply is very limited. We have to travel a long ways,” Gunsauls said. “Being short-handed for people, trying to get trucks out here, tankers, that’s our biggest thing.”

The chief said crews were retrieving water from a water tower by traveling Highway E north of the location.

“Then they’re going south the other way, getting other water from another tower.”

Estimates are at least 30,000 to 40,000 gallons of water was transported to fight the fire.

The cause of the fire is not known at this time. Yutzy said an employee who was in the basement heard a noise, and came up to find the fire already going.

The following morning, Yutzy and his family were cleaning up, and expected other members of the Amish community to arrive to help later in the day. No doubt they will do their best to get the store up again: “We’ll try to build back,” Yutzy told Muddy River News.

We’ve covered the Canton community here before. Several hundred Amish people live in this community, which was founded in the mid-1980s. By its rather plain appearance, I’d say it’s at least a bit on the more traditional side.

Some years ago, Don Burke shared a set of photos from a wintertime visit to this community, one of over 60 Amish communities in the Show-Me State. All best to this family and community as they clean up and rebuild.

Update: Less Than A Week Later, The Store Is Already Well On Its Way Back

It didn’t take long. Just days after the fire, construction on a new Rustic Ridge Variety Store is already underway.

According to a follow-up report from Michele McCormack at Muddy River News, the crew working on Tuesday included men and boys from Milton, Iowa, a community over an hour away by car.

In total they apparently have had 30 to 40 people helping out (mostly local, as owner Eli Yutzy shared) – so it’s no surprise that the frame and more is already up.

Yutzy says word of the fire spread quickly — probably through Amish taxi drivers.

The new building won’t just be a copy-paste replacement. “It’s a little bit bigger,” Yutzy told Muddy River News. “We’re adding quite a few square feet and allowing more light in than before.”

If you follow these stories of the Amish response to disaster, this one is probably no surprise. In fact, it’d be more surprising if cleanup and rebuilding were to drag on and on.

Muddy River Express has the full story and some nice photos of the progress being made here.