Pawhuska home destroyed by fire; accounts set up to help

 
 A fire Sunday afternoon destroyed Letty Goad Bradley's home of 25 years and all of her earthly possessions, but the Pawhuska woman was tough in the face of the tragedy and maintained good cheer even as the flames crackled high above her.

"I was at the casino, losing my money, and now I've lost my home," said Bradley, well known in Pawhuska from her years operating the Pullman Cafe. "I've heard of people losing their home to casinos, but not like this."

Accounts to help Bradley has been set up at First National Bank and Osage Federal Bank in Pawhuska. She had no insurance on the house at 109 Kansas in Lynn Addition. "The house wasn't worth more than $800 a 

year," she explained. Her expenses are already mounting: Some $200 worth of natural gas leaked out during and after the fire, and she lost everything. She went to stay with her daughter. 

The fire was reported by a deputy sheriff at 4 p.m. Sunday, which turned out to be bad timing for firefighters. Only Capt. Lloyd Arnce was on duty, and he made a one-man response with a 1,200 gallon tanker. Arnce found the house fully involved and called for help from volunteer and off-duty firefighters.

Arnce ran out of water in short order, and another fire truck turned up but it took several minutes to run the hose to a fire hydrant a block away on St. Paul. Several volunteers pitched in to drag the heavy hose the distance as quickly as possible.

Acting Fire Chief Laban Miles said that the fire occurred when it just happened that half of the department was out of town, in Bartlesville at at other locations. 

"It's the first time we've been caught like that," Miles said, who was at Walmart when the fire was reported. 

A deputy called for help from the Nelagoney Fire Department but couldn't raise anyone, then turned to Pershing and Wynona volunteers, who showed up. 

Miles said he returned from Bartlesville after hearing a broadcast for firefighters to meet at the station, and turned up assuming it was something routine. "I pulled up and saw that two trucks were gone, and said, 'Oh, no.'"

With plenty of water coming from the St. Paul hydrant, firefighters managed to douse the biggest flames in about 20 minutes, but they remained on the scene for 4 1/2 hours. Eight Pawhuska firefighters and at least a dozen from other departments responded to the fire, as did volunteers who included city electrician Bill Bruce.

The heat from the fire was intense next door at the home of Mary and Tim Hartness, whose daughter Charla Allen and granddaughters Sage and Blake used garden hoses to keep sparks from catching the house on fire, while husband and father Gip Allen, a Pawhuska firefighter, fought the fire at Bradley's frame house.

The cause of the fire is unkmown.

Comments

[anon]

Thank you Louise Redcorn...