Posted to Fires on
Des Moines Register

Photos by Laurel and Dean Ohloff

POSTVILLE, IA — A large fire in the eastern Iowa town of Postville devoured a downtown bakery today and displaced at least 13 people who lived in upstairs apartments, an eyewitness said.

Fire Destroys Bakery, Upstairs Apartments in Postville

Des Moines Register

Photos by Laurel and Dean Ohloff

POSTVILLE, IA — A large fire in the eastern Iowa town of Postville devoured a downtown bakery today and displaced at least 13 people who lived in upstairs apartments, an eyewitness said.

Firefighters from at least six departments were still fighting the blaze at 2 p.m., almost four hours after residents first saw smoke. No injuries were reported, but the fire destroyed the Postville Bakery & Restaurant, which was out of business.

“It’s pretty bad,” said the Rev. Steve Brackett, pastor at St. Paul Lutheran Church about three blocks from the bakery. “It pretty much has consumed the entire building. But at this point, the firewalls between the two adjoining buildings have held.”

Brackett said the fire appears to have started in one of the upstairs apartments. The tenants include at least one family and several employees at the Agri Star kosher meat plant, formerly known as Agriprocessors Inc.

Brackett said he was first called about the fire around 10:30 a.m. The church is helping at least one family of four “that lost absolutely everything,” he said. Firefighters had to evacuate one couple through their second-floor window.

The fire consumed the bakery and filled the downtown with a smoke so thick that “you could barely see the fire trucks,” Brackett said.

The bakery sits in Postville’s business district on Lawler Street, between an appliance store and a gift shop.

Related Articles

9 Comments

  • MosheG

    can someone tell me what this story is doing on crownheights.info??

    this is NOT Chabad News , Crown Heights News , or EVEN Jewish News!!

    There are other sites out there that are responsible to put these sorta stories out!

  • Downtown?

    “A large fire in the eastern Iowa town of Postville devoured a downtown bakery today”

    This is terrible. But I have just one question.

    There’s a “downtown” in Postville? Where?

  • MosheG

    Postville IS a jewish community.

    the Bakery IS NOT, and has nothing to do with the jewish community!

    along the same lines as your logic begs the question as to why it wasn’t reported here on Crownheights.info that Postvilles Locker closed down.

    (the locker in town is a mall scale abattoir where farmers take their pigs, and or other large animals to get a customized kill and packaging)

  • cdfdsc

    I was at postville at the time which was on shabbos and the person who own the bakery is rho one which brougt the unions toagri and he made lots of problems for sholom mordechai and it was done on purpos