Hey, your pet food's on fire!

Just around 1:00 this afternoon, as I was making my way to Mom's house when I noticed a plume of smoke coming from the general direction of Beautiful Downtown Monmouth. At that moment, the main city siren went off, as well. My conclusion: that can't be good.

I drove in the general direction of the smoke (as you can see, the smoke trail

was not hard to follow),

to see the local Dog food factory on fire. I parked about three blocks away, what I concluded was probably a safe distance from events, directly under the great black plume and walked in to see if I could get anybody to tell me what the heck was going on. Nobody was talking much, just standing and gaping. I could understand why.

We haven't had a big fire like this in... oh, six years or so. Naturally, everybody was out to join in the fuss. Even Andrea Zinga (or her doppelganger) had taken a moment from her campaign trail to see the blaze, along with her campaign van and a crew member (although how she got there ahead of me I'm still not sure).

I'd been there, on the northwest side, gawping, feeling the heat on my face, for about ten minutes when the police officer by the train tracks received a call on
his radio, and he promptly informed us that we all needed to move back another 2 blocks. About that same moment, I noticed embers flying overhead, and they didn't seem to be winking out too quickly. I was in Mom's car, and it was parked, as you recall, directly under the smoke plume. We don't need to spend time explaining to Mom why her car is charred. I made haste to move away. In a roundabout fashion, I wound up directly opposite my position, on the south side, staring up at the smoke again, surrounded by an even bigger crowd -- it doesn't take long for one to gather.

Still, the only fire departments on the scene were our own and those from nearby Kirkwood. That changed rapidly with the arrival of crews and trucks from Little York, Biggsville, and Smithshire, followed by the remaining firefighters from a 40-mile radius of Monmouth (including Burlington, IA).

By this time, the police and firefighters realized that there were several large liquid propane tanks nearby, as well as a number of acetylene tanks, not to mention that the tallest structure on the plant
is a grain elevator with the ability to, when lit, take out a five-block radius. They began earnestly evacuating the neighborhood.

Even the MSM were around -- one of the Quad Cities news channels had already arrived in a van, two sent airplanes to get footage from above, and one even managed a helicopter -- which flew directly through the smoke.

The railroads were stopped, temporarily, in Galesburg and Burlington.

Reports indicated, when I left the scene at 2:30-ish p.m., that 2 persons who worked for the company were still unaccounted for.

Nobody yet has made an official statement of cause, but one report also indicated some unknown persons fleeing the scene early on.

Any and all official news is likely to reach me last of all, though. All I know is it's one helluva way to spend a Sunday in a small town.