By Jordan Wilcox
Assistant Publisher
At about 4:45 pm on Sunday, June 1st, emergency services were dispatched to an ablaze residence on the south (Van Buren County) side of Baseline Road near 51 ½ in Columbia Township.
Deputies from the Van Buren County Sheriff’s office and Life Ambulance attendants were the first to arrive on the scene. They worked swiftly to assist the wheelchair-bound homeowner out of their burning home and treat their injuries.
By the time the resident was safely out of the home, the fire had spread to two neighboring outbuildings and a nearby field. Luckily, though, eight fire departments had arrived with tankers and manpower: Columbia Township, Allegan, Bangor Community, Bloomingdale, Gobles Pine Grove, Lawrence, Lee Township, and South Haven Area Emergency Services (SHAES).
The firefighters quickly got to work, and according to the Gobles Pine Grove FD, extinguished the blaze within an hour and a half.
This fire marked the second time on Sunday that the Allegan, Bloomingdale, and Gobles-Pine Grove fire departments came together to battle a house fire.
Just about 12 hours earlier, at around 5 am, the three departments were dispatched to the Brunner residence on M-40 near 6th Avenue and the Gobles Seventh-day Adventist Church.
Upon arrival, firefighters learned that the home had been fully engulfed in flames. They worked diligently for the next three hours, extinguishing the flames and trying to salvage what they could. However, the structure fire ultimately resulted in a total loss.
Fortunately, though, the home was vacant, so only the building was lost. No lives or injuries occurred.
Although the official cause of both fires is unknown, the Brunner family believes their home fell victim to an arson attack.
In a semi-viral Facebook post, Scott Brunner, caretaker of his grandparents’ former home, alleges that someone trespassed onto the property in the cover of night and lit the house on fire.
He recently gated the driveway, but before that, Brunner says that teenagers would frequently cause chaos on the property, and he’d have to shoo them off almost daily.
Couple that with the fact that the home’s power has been turned off for a while, and Brunner believes that there’s no way it could’ve happened by accident.
He also stated that the Columbia Township fire “sounds suspiciously similar.”
Anyone with information is asked to call the Gobles Pine Grove Fire Department at (269) 628-2908.
