By Gari Voss
The call came to Gobles Pine Grove Fire Chief Brian Cronk at 5:58am that smoke was pouring from the northwest section of Merson Store at M-40 and 102nd Avenue. By the time Gobles Pine Grove and Allegan Fire Departments arrived a little after 6am, the store was engulfed in flames and moving fast with smoke too thick for any visibility.
“This is an old building,” stated Fire Chief Brian Cronk. “There was a lot of plastic and merchandise.”
“The aging structure, plastic, foam, and merchandise make a huge fuel load,” explained Allegan Fire Chief Nick Brink.
When the firefighters began arriving, they had to break down doors and use an excavator to peal away the metal roof for better access.
The operation required six fire departments on site. Gobles, Allegan, Gun Plain, Otsego and Bloomingdale Fire Departments brought tankers. With no fire hydrants in rural areas, the departments rely on tankers to bring water from nearby lakes. Bloomingdale had the equipment to load the tankers from the fill-site on Baseline Lake. Water was pumped from the tankers into the dump tank that was erected in the intersection.
Because of the early morning hour, involving the number of fire departments was imperative. In addition to the tankers and equipment, Lee Fire Department was called to bring their ladder truck. Add Gobles’ pumper, squad, and pickups, the only piece that was absolutely necessary was the volunteers.
“This is a difficult time of day for responders,” shared Chief Cronk. “Some are just getting off work and others are headed to work. We are fortunate that some companies understand when workers are leaving early or arriving late for work.”
“One rule we try to follow is to have enough people to cover the first group of firefighters and provide backup to give breaks,” shared Chief Brink. “The departments send only a few firefighters each to daytime fires, so it was difficult to keep everyone fresh as they fought the fire.”
The initial blaze was out before 10am, but smoke was still coming from sections of the building and had to be completely extinguished. It was after 11am before the last of the fire trucks pulled away from the charred remains of what was Merson Store.
As is his practice with commercial buildings, Chief Cronk called upon the Michigan State Police to do a thorough investigation on the cause of the fire and to speak with the insurance company and owner Larry Luedecking, who had temporarily closed the store several months before after the death of his son.
The neighbors and patrons who relied on the early morning coffee and store favorites expressed their sadness at the loss of the icon that had served the community for over 40 years.
Thanks were given to not only the fire departments at the scene, but the fire departments like Hopkins, Martin, and Paw Paw who covered the stations that had sent equipment and firefighters to fight the blaze, and to the volunteers who responded to the call.
By 10am, four hours after the call was sent to Gobles Pine Grove Fire Chief Brian Cronk that Merson Store had smoke coming from it, firefighters were still working to extinguish areas that still smoldered. Thanks to the many fire departments and tank trucks, water filled the dump tank and was pumped through hoses to douse the fire.
