Fire possibly caused by refrigerator

Fire-damaged funeral home leveled
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By Roy Bernard

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rbernard@daily-journal.com
815-929-5408

Bourbonnais, IL

The Clancy-Gernon Funeral Home in Bourbonnais, which was severely damaged by fire on Sept. 19, has been demolished.

Funeral home co-owner Patty Clancy said Thursday that Clancy-Gernon's insurance company gave approval for the damaged property to be razed.

A new building will follow the same footprint of the old, Clancy said, but some small interior changes are planned. She added that the funeral home should be open sometime in the late summer or early fall.

The cause of the fire has been narrowed to something electrical, possibly from a compressor for a cooler. Clancy said the funeral home's insurance company is looking into liability issues with the insurer of the cooler manufacturer.

The fire at the funeral home at 295 Main Street Northwest resulted in more than $2 million in damage, including about $250,000 in vehicles.

MOTOR IN REFRIGERATOR CAUSED HOUSEBOAT FIRE

12/19/06 12:40 PST

A fire that burned two of three apartment units of a houseboat at the Waldo Point Harbor in Sausalito early Saturday morning was caused by a malfunctioning motor in a refrigerator in a rental unit, Marin County Fire Marshal Scott Alber said this morning.

Alber said the motor either seized or overheated and started the fire around 12:15 a.m. The fire caused $200,000 damage and displaced the three people living on the boat and the owners' son who was visiting, Alber said.

The fire was controlled by 2:30 a.m. The fire displaced a man in his 80s, who was a tenant, and the boat's owners, a couple in their 50s and 60s, Alber said. All three had been living on the boat since the late 1960s, Alber said.

A vacant unit on the boat was not damaged and the owners plan to live there, Alber said.

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Refrigerator starts fire, 3 dead

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Published: Monday, November 27, 2006 3:57 PM CST
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Officials with the Illinois state fire marshal's office spent Friday and part of Saturday investigating a mobile home fire near Dale that claimed three lives earlier Friday.

The fire left two children and one adult dead in the mobile home that housed eight people.

Katherine Ann Demuth, 41, and her son 16-year-old son, Andrew "Andy" Demuth, died in the fire, along with 5-year-old James Farley. The other five residents escaped the blaze with only minor injuries.

They were Katherine's brother, Joseph Demuth, and his son, Mark; Katherine's boyfriend, Bobby Leek; James Farley's mother, Dawn Garrison; and James's sister, a 6-year-old who was not identified by the family.

Joseph Demuth suffered minor burns trying to get to his sister and others trapped in the fire. Bobby Leek was transported to Hamilton Memorial Hospital in McLeansboro, where he was treated for a back injury and released.

"We were all asleep when my girlfriend heard someone yelling," said Joseph Demuth. "We jumped up and tried to get everybody out as fast as we could, but not everybody made it out."

Investigators had not officially determined the cause of the fire, but Demuth said he believed the fire started in an old refrigerator in a middle bedroom.

My product would have shut that refrigerator off and might have prevented the fire.