FIRE RAZES MORLEY PLANT; STOCKADE BUILDING INC. WILL REBUILD

MORLEY -- Today, Vince and Julie Draper will try to salvage the remnants of their manufacturing plant, which was destroyed by fire early Thursday.

But they already know what the biggest loss was: decades of records that burned inside the buildings that housed the firm's offices.

Stockade Building Inc., one of the area's largest employers, was destroyed by a blaze that required nine rural fire departments to put out.

The company manufactures pre-engineered wood frame buildings. The Rhodes 101 Stop buildings familiar to area residents are made by Stockade, which ships to 30 different states.

The loss was estimated at $1 million to $1.25 million.

But Vince Draper, who started the company 20 years ago, said it will be hard to put a value on the loss of the records.

"Somehow we have to reconcile accounts receivable," he said.

The company kept backup files in case of a computer malfunction but did not keep the backups in a separate place in case of a fire.

"Now we know better," Draper said. "It was a tremendous loss."

The company employs 60 people. Plans are to set up a temporary office and be back in business as early as next week.

"We want to rebuild as fast as we can to put these people back to work," said Julie Draper, the founder's wife.

The 25,000-square-foot main manufacturing plant and the two smaller office buildings were consumed by the fire, which was reported at 3:07 a.m. Other outbuildings were spared by the firefighters' efforts.

Fighting the fire were Morley, N.B.C., Scott County Rural, Blodgett, Advance, Delta, Sikeston, Vanduser and Oran fire departments. That much manpower was required because no water source was near the building at 1543 state Highway 91.

Oran Fire Chief Michael Ramsey said water was shuttled to the site in five tanker trucks running from Morley, Vanduser and from an irrigation pump a mile or two from the scene.

"That was our greatest challenge," he said of the shuttle effort.

The 44 firefighters called out had the blaze under control within an hour, Ramsey said. They sprayed more than 45,000 gallons of water on the fire.

He said the manufacturing building was already "on the ground" by the time the Oran firefighters arrived. The Morley volunteers were the first to respond to the fire.

Butch Amman of the state fire marshal's office is investigating the cause of the fire.

Julie Draper said the company lost "the heart of the business," including a truss machine and component saw. "We can do some temporary things until we get the machines replaced," she said.

She said she and her husband used to take the company's backup files home with them but had stopped doing so. "Something happened to the system, we got frustrated and quit doing it," she said.

"We have no backup."

She called the loss of records "devastating."

"It's years and years of records we have lost and will never get back," she said. "We'll basically be starting over."