Missy and I rolled out of bed about 5 am this morning for a building fire in the neighboring town of Gerald, 25 miles north of Sullivan, when one of our pumpers and tankers were paged out to assist on a second alarm and quickly escalated to a third alarm as I was dressing….I had to turn the computer on and bring up mapquest cause I couldnt remember where the road was located…and we were soon on the road to Gerald…figured I would park at the Roller Mill parking lot and then hoof it over to the fire, that way I would be well out of everyone`s way parking wise, but as it was, I was able to park on the crest of the hill above the fire and left Missy with a birds eye view of it.

It was a three story building in the back, one story in the front, an older church building made into apartments. I was able to smell the heavy smoke at the east edge of town and there were still some flames at the peak of the roofline when I arrived on the scene….

..of course, when I activated my big flashgun, well I lit up the guy sitting on the portable monitor just fine, but all my nice reflections and flames left me….

..so I shut that thing off and went back to the night shots…they look better anyway in my humble opinion….more dramatic anyway.

Well as you can see, there was a glow and flames up there on the roofline…and firefighters and trucks from as far away as Boles Fire District at Gray Summit to the east, Gasconade departments like Owensville to the west, New Haven to the north, and Sullivan and St Clair to the south, put together a good plan for attacking the heavy fire and while it took a few hours, totally extinguished this fire….

…the two ladder trucks from Owensville and Union Fire Districts, set up in the very back, where there was a nice roomy parking lot that joined up with the new church parking lot behind it, giving firefighters better access for tanker shuttles and truck placement….

…the next two photos show our pumper 854 on the right side, supplying Union`s ladder 8212 with water and our Tanker 853 dumping its 3,000 gallon load into the drop tank for Owensville`s ladder truck…..I used my flashgun on the second photo…

…and here is a photo showing both ladder trucks in operation spraying water on the upper story area and roofline where the heaviest fire was located at the back of the building.

..I stayed long enough to shoot the beautiful sunrise coming up in the backdrop….

…and around the front of the building, where trucks from Beaufort-Leslie, Union, and Owensville were set up at….