Fire claims Montgomery home

Wade Young, Montgomery Messenger

An afternoon fire on Friday, Feb. 4 destroyed the family home of Pete and Amy Bulger of rural Montgomery.

The call to the Montgomery Fire Department came at 2:27 p.m. for a structure fire on 181st Avenue in Montgomery Township. Chief Lloyd Wiechmann said when Assistant Chief Tony Kadrlik arrived on the scene, fire had already engulfed the old timber house. Nobody was injured in the fire, but the Bulger's 12-year-old yellow lab and farm cat were both killed.

Because only six Montgomery fire fighters were able to respond to the scene, Kadrlik called for mutual assistance from Le Center and then from New Prague.

He said by the time Montgomery first arrived, the fire had already taken over.

The fire chief added that the location of the house at the end of a snowy country road, lack of room for vehicles and the cold temperatures hampered the extinguishing of the fire. The width of the road and distance from any water source only made fighting the fire harder.

In a phone interview on Tuesday, Pete said officials had investigated the cause of the fire and were looking at wiring and heat tape in the basement as the causes.

Nobody was in the home when the fire broke out, Pete said. Their oldest son, Thomas, 8, was in school, and Billy, 6, and his mother were on a plane coming home from visiting their grandparents, Larry and Karen Parsons who are wintering in Arizona.

Pete, a police officer with the Montgomery Police Department, said he was on the scene and watched the fire destroy their home of six years. He said the fire was so bad, nothing was salvageable.

Savings funds

A savings fund account has been set up for the Bulger family at Frandsen Bank and Trust and CornerStone State Bank, both in Montgomery.