On Tuesday, May 7, we (Peggy and Al Goerlitz) had a fire in our Quonset shed and lost a lifetime of accumulated tools, woodworking equipment and wood, horse drawn carriages and sleighs, our Ferris lawn mower, and our skidsteer. We are not sure how the fire started, but our best guess is from sparks made when Al was cutting some steel with a chop-saw in the morning. They may have been smoldering and the fire broke out in the afternoon.

The shed acted like a wind tunnel as the wind was blowing hard out of the south and in the south door and out the north door. One neighbor reported that the flames were shooting about 40 feet out the north end. The heat coming off the building melted bikes that were outside next to the building on the west side and started wood on fire that was outside on the east side. The heat from the building killed apple trees and large pines that were 60 feet away. The pure power of the heat coming off the fire and the flames themselves is something you never want to experience.

We are writing this to let everyone know how devastating a fire is. We are taught about it in grade school and all know that fires are dangerous, but until you have a fire that changes your life, it doesn’t really hit home.

We encourage everyone to review your insurance policies as soon as possible and update the value of your property and belongings. With the inflation we have been experiencing the value of everything you own has gone up so make sure your policy reflects the new value. Ours was not kept up and now we struggle with what we will be able to replace.

The Goerlitz family would like to extend a special thank you to the men and women on the O-W-C fire department for the sacrifice of the time and talents they displayed on May 7 when they fought the fire. They worked as a well-oiled machine not only fighting the fire, but also keeping the traffic on County Road X safely moving. We would also like to thank our friends and neighbors for helping clean up the mess that was left. We thank God daily for the wonderful neighbors and friends we have that are always there for us. We were blessed by the Leid families, the Horsts, Zimmermans, Hoovers, Dale Severson, and the Brubakers, our friends from St. Peter’s Lutheran Church, as well as my friend Wesley at Tri-County Equipment. Without people like this in our lives there would be a tremendous void to be filled. Situations like this make us glad we live in a small town where people still care about each other and a local paper still serves the area.