The building was the Eilers Hotel on the northwest end of the City Square. After a child started a fire in the hotel while playing with a lighter, powerful winds from the west fanned the flames throughout the entire structure.

The result was an inferno that killed one person, injured 15 others and destroyed the downtown landmark.

The blaze left 54 people homeless.

The smoke could be seen some 35 miles away in the Wright County community of Goldfield.

-Messenger file photo by Tim Hynds
Fort Dodge firefighter John Thoma carries an unidentified child to safety at the Eilers Hotel on Feb. 3, 1994, as others follow him down a ladder. Fifty-five people were in the hotel when the historic downtown structure began to burn.

“It was a miracle that only one life was lost,” Fort Dodge Fire Chief Steve Hergenreter said. “We thought the death toll would be much higher.”

He said the building and the wind combined to create the “worst case scenario to have a fire.”

At about 9 a.m. on Feb. 3, 1994, the Fort Dodge Fire Department was dispatched to the hotel at 4 N. Fifth St.

Former Fire Chief John Webster, who was a lieutenant in the Fire Department at the time, recalled that the intial report was smoke in the hallway.

“The owner was going up and down the hall, banging on doors, telling people to get out because of the smoke,” Webster said.

-Messenger file photo
The Eilers Hotel lies in ruins after the devasting fire 25 years ago.

Mitch Sells, who retired from the Fire Department as a captain, was assigned to the aerial ladder truck that day.

“When we arrived there was quite a bit of smoke coming out,” Sells said.

He said when the fire trucks rolled up, there was a family of four standing on a small roof over the main entrance on the east side of the building. Sells said the aerial ladder was immediately extended. He and another firefighter, the late John Thoma, brought the family down to safety. Their effort was among many ladder rescues that day.

Hergenreter said “well over a dozen people were rescued by ground ladders.”

Some of those ladders were set up by telephone company employees, according to former Assistant Fire Chief Doug Ostbloom. He said service technicians from Frontier Communications who were in the area set up their ladders on the south side of the building, enabling four or five people to escape.

-Messenger file photo
People hang their upper bodies out the windows of the burning Eilers Hotel. Only one person died in the blaze.

The severity of the blaze prompted a recall of all the city’s off-duty firefighters. Hergenreter and Ostbloom, who was a lieutenant at the time, were among the off-duty firefighters who came back to work. They met former Firefighter Mark Peters at the firehouse and responded to the scene in a pumper truck.

Hergenreter recalled the immense cloud of smoke as they headed down Central Avenue to the fire.

“There was just a tremendous amount of smoke already,” he said.

There were people hanging out of the hotel’s windows when they arrived. The three quickly put up portable ladders. As soon as the ladders were raised, the people were scrambling out of the windows and on to them.

“People weren’t waiting for firefighters to come up and help them,” Hergenreter said.

-Messenger file photo
Fort Dodge firefighters continue to cool the fire that ruined the Eilers Hotel. At one point, a firefighters risked his life to enter the blaze and save a resident. His gear was ruined by the heat.

A bystander at the scene yelled to Hergenreter that other firefighters needed help on the north side of the building. He ran over there in time to witness a rescue that he calls one of the most dramatic he has seen in a firefighting career that started in 1989.

He said Steve Teske, who is now a Fire Department captain, and another firefighter, the late Tom Peart, learned that a man was unconscious in a first-floor room. He said Teske crawled into the room through a window, found the man and dragged him back to the window. Teske handed the man to Peart, then jumped out the window with smoke coming off his bunker coat.

“He just bailed out the window and fell on the ground,” Hergenreter said. “The conditions were that severe.”

Teske’s protective clothing and self-contained breathing apparatus were destroyed by extreme heat, he said.

The man Teske pulled from the building was airlifted to the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics in Iowa City. He survived his injuries.

No firefighters were able to stay in the building for very long because of the intensity of the fire.

“The building took off pretty quick,” Ostbloom said.

He said firefighters surrounded the building with hose streams from the outside and “soaked her down.”

A portion of the south side of the building collapsed in the early afternoon.

According to Hergenreter, Clayton Chalstrom, a retired assistant fire chief, was at the scene and spotted bricks cracking. He got the firefighters away from the building.

“That three-story wall just came down like a curtain,” Hergerneter said.

Firefighters poured water onto the smoking ruins throughout the night.

The next day, the body of David L. Frederickson was found in the rubble.

Firefighters were on the scene that day and the next until the last hot spot was finally doused.