Whitewater fire leaves family with uncertain holidays

Fire consumed a Whitewater mobile home in minutes Tuesday night, and a mother of three who lived there tearfully wondered a day later how much damage also had been done to her family's suddenly questionable Christmas.

Sandra Rhodes, 30, surveyed the blackened shell of the trailer that sits along Route A near Main Street, not far from the Whitewater Post Office. Rhodes, who wiped back tears more than once, was in shock, especially at the thought of a family Christmas not spent in the mobile home with her husband Kevin and their three young sons.

"It's gone -- all gone," Rhodes said. "What do I do?"

The blaze was extinguished in about 30 minutes, fire officials said Wednesday, but that was more than enough time for the fire to consume gifts she and her husband had hidden from their sons -- Landon, 11, Logan, 7, and 15-month-old Rickey Lee.

Rhodes has no idea how everything could be replaced with less than two weeks until Christmas.

The structure was a total loss, according to fire chief Garry Moore. Seven volunteer firefighters who responded from the Whitewater fire district had assistance from seven Delta counterparts. The initial call was at about 7 p.m.

The fire began, Moore said, in an unoccupied front part of the trailer. A cause has not been determined, but Moore said it wouldn't surprise him if one of the several heaters spaced throughout the home had been left on.

Moore said it didn't take long for fire to consume the trailer.

"Once those mobile homes get any kind of fire, it travels so fast," he said. "It doesn't take much to burn them down once the fire gets going."

Moore planned to sift through the rubble Wednesday, but he wasn't sure if he would find any answers. Authorities have no reason to believe the fire was intentionally set.

Whitewater, a village of 125 in southwest Cape Girardeau County, has been largely free of fires in 2012, Moore said. The department hadn't had to respond to a structure fire since around the beginning of the year.

"Even with the dry season we had, our number of calls have gone way down," Moore said. "Obviously, that's a good thing."

Not for Rhodes, who said their structure was a good home for the past eight years. The couple had been Christmas shopping with their sons, she said, when they got a call from a frantic neighbor.

"We'd just paid everything off," Rhodes lamented. "It was the first time we really didn't have a lot of debt."

She checked off the things they would have to replace -- appliances, furniture, clothes; not to mention the items that held sentimental value. The couple also had spent several thousand dollars, Rhodes said, making upgrades to the mobile home.

Now, it was all gone.

"I had even just brought groceries in the night before," she said. "I just can't believe it. At Christmas."

smoyers@semissourian.com

388-3642

Pertinent address:

Route A and Main Street, Whitewater, Mo.