Nikki Rick realized something was very wrong on Friday, when their mini-horse, Chief, began to neigh and whinny urgently, and to act very agitated. “I thought, ‘what’s up’,” she related. “The next thing I know,” she said, her husband Dean ran in the house. And he yelled, “call the fire department!”
“I thought, ‘God, I don’t know where my phone is’. You know?” said Mrs. Ricks, a retired local Para-Educator, putting her finger on a particular problem with modern technology. “I worked with Mr. Linen in technology some, not a lot,” she noted. “But,” she added, “the school is very very blessed to have Lance Linen as their technology director and Jess Toliver as a Superintendent. You couldn’t ask for two better men than what we have in that right now.”
Yet, while her experience in technology, aided by her former co-workers, may have made her savvier in using her phone it didn’t help at all in finding it. Meanwhile, in those long moments she was searching for it, the fire that was burning their wood pile was growing bigger and spreading rapidly in the dry, extreme heat. “So we’re grateful for our emergency services, especially out here in the country.”
And indeed, it was the extreme heat which the area had been experiencing for days which was determined to be the cause of the blaze. “They had a round bale that combusted from the heat and humidity,” explained Tom Patterson, Chief of the Eagle Grove Fire Department. “It could have been a lot worse. It started the woodpile (on fire) and then it started the storage container.”
Luckily, first responders were on the scene in minutes. Eagle Grove’s firefighters were the first to arrive, then local police and a County Sheriff’s officer, followed mere seconds later by an Eagle Grove ambulance, and still more firefighters with a water truck. “It had to be pretty quick today,” Chief Patterson remarked, wiping sweat from his brow as a novel way of referencing the heat. Nodding with satisfaction he added, “we had a good response.”
The Ricks were very thankful for the quick response. “We have to remember they’ve got their jobs to do too. And you know they’re called off their jobs, some of them, to take care of us,” said Mrs. Ricks. “We should never take that for granted. The same with Eagle Grove Ambulance, and the police, the same way. We have so much to be thankful for in small town Iowa.” “I do also want to thank the Fire Department,” added Mr. Ricks, “for the quick response.”
Mrs. Rick was also thankful that they’d been home, and that Dean had been outside working with their animals, which she said is his hobby, when the fire broke out. Noting that “it could have happened when we were out.” Instead, she said, “we had just finished up with a short water break and Dean had gone back out. So what a blessing.”
“We’ve got a lot of dry out here,” she said, “and it’s hot, and the wind is blowing. And it very easily could have gone to what livestock we’ve got in the back, and it didn’t.”
The couple has five chickens, one of which is an Australian breed, four goats (two of which they house for neighbors) and a 4 year old, 34 inch mini painted gelding.
“He alerted us,” Mrs. Ricks said, Chief as the hero of the day. “We’re very grateful for him!”
“He was whinnying pretty good,” Mr. Ricks agreed, “so were the goats.”
Mr. Ricks, a retired Environmental Supervisor who worked at Rotary Senior Living and is now the President of the Rotary Club of Eagle Grove, saw the hand of providence at work in how things ended up happening.
The fire had burned up their woodpile which the couple had saved for winter heating. And Mr. Ricks had been concerned about it. “That wood was pretty dry,” Dean noted, “I was gonna split it next week.” But now, the wood is reduced to large chunks of charcoal, and “that won’t burn too well in the fireplace now,” Mrs. Ricks explained.
The fire burned a hole in one of the Ricks’ storage containers, and also melted the siding on the back of their garage, where Dean keeps his collection of antique tools, and his fun car, a BMW Z4 Roadster.
“Get this,” he pointed out, “last week I didn’t have that insured. Now, go figure! Who’d have thought?” But, he said, something had made his insurance agent think of it. “She called me wanting to know if I wanted to put my shop on (their insurance) because it wasn’t on my commercial insurance.
“She says, ‘y’know we look at your insurance every year’,” and he agreed. Now he’s grateful for her and whatever inspired her, adding that “something biblical” was the only way for him to describe it. “I’m kinda a little shook up,” he said, “but ‘all things work together for good, to those who are called according to His purpose’. That’s all I can think of right now.” Though, he said with an ironic chuckle, “I wonder how suspicious they’ll think this is that it happened so quick. This darn heat!”
“We’re involved in our church, which is Grace Evangelical Free Church,” said Mrs. Ricks, noting that both are also Rotarians. “We’re very blessed to have Andy Pull. In fact I called him right away. And Andy, bless his heart, prayed with me and calmed me down,” said Mrs. Ricks. “We’re blessed. I mean, when I look at what could have happened. We’re very blessed.”
