The fire at 1216 First Ave. N. was reported at 8:55 a.m.

”We could see the smoke as soon as we opened the garage doors at the fire station,” Fire Department Capt. Steve Teske said.

When the firefighters arrived, they used a kind of water cannon called a deck gun mounted on top of a pumper to put the first stream of water on the large volume of flames coming out of the house, Teske said. He said there was fire in the first and second floors, plus the attic.

”Then the windows on the stairway let go, and the fire went out and began spreading on the exterior wall,” Teske said.

The house sustained very extensive fire damage throughout its west side. Some siding near the roofline of the house to the west sustained heat damage.

No one was injured.

Five off-duty firefighters were called back to help.

Teske said the cause of the fire remains under investigation.

Emergency personnel were on the scene until about noon.

The house is owned by M & D Enterprises Inc., of Fort Dodge, according to online records of the Webster County Assessor’s Office. It was built in 1901, according to those records.

Sunday’s fire was the second major blaze in a vacant Fort Dodge house in about a week. On May 10, a house at 1414 Eighth Ave. S. was signifcantly damaged in an early morning fire.

Police and firefighters were called to 1216 First Ave. N. on May 15, 2018, when the body of a dead man was found in a shed behind the house.

The death of Richard D. Hill, 55, of Fort Dodge, was not considered suspicious.

”From what we gathered, he was basically homeless and was living in the shed, more or less,” Fort Dodge police Capt. Ryan Gruenberg said shortly after Hill’s death.