VIDEO: West Deer firefighters spent seven hours battling a massive house fire at a former alpaca farm on Logan Road Tuesday night.
Smoky conditions and 20-degree temperatures were just a couple of the complications crews faced.
“Once we started flowing water, everything became covered in ice,” said Chief Josh Wiegand, with West Deer Volunteer Fire Department #3. “The ground, guys were falling down. They were covered in ice themselves. Whenever we tried to change their air cylinders, we had to thaw the ice away so that we could change their cylinders.”
Wiegand also noted the roof collapsing made the fire much more difficult to put out and led to firefighters being called back three times Wednesday to extinguish hot spots that rekindled.