YOU ARE HERE: Central Kentucky Home→Collections→Waynesburg

Fire destroys Waynesburg business

January 20, 2012|By JOANNA KING | jking@amnews.com

Joanna King

WAYNESBURG — A predawn fire today destroyed Ruckel’s Farm Supply just off U.S. 27 in the Waynesburg community of southern Lincoln County.

In what has become a familiar routine, firefighters responded to a structure fire about 3:20 a.m.
Pete Van Hook, who owns Ruckel’s Grocery Store and Deli that shares a parking lot with the burned business, said he received a call about 2:30 a.m. from a woman who rents a house from him across the street from the businesses.

She thought the smoke she was seeing was coming from his store. Van Hook woke the owner of the farm supply store, brother-in-law Jeff Ruckel, who lives close by.

Lincoln County Sheriff’s Department responded and was quickly joined by Lincoln County Fire Department. Fire Chief Danny Glass said, “We got the call about 3:20 a.m. There was smoke and a structure fire within a few minutes after.”

Glass said the fire appeared to have been burning hot in the center of the structure. Initially, only smoke could be seen from outside, but the roof already was sagging in the middle, an indication that fire was consuming the building from the inside out.

Sheriff Curt Folger was on the scene along with Detective Pat Alford, the Kentucky State Police arson investigator in charge of trying to find out who may be setting structure fires in the Waynesburg and Eubank region south of Stanford.

“We can’t say if they may be related or really anything about it at this point,” Alford said of the recent fires.
Alford talked to the staff at the Dollar General Store on U.S. 27 across from Ruckel’s on the chance a surveillance camera might aid in the investigation of today’s fire.

An uninhabited trailer that burned two days ago is only a quarter of a mile away through the woods behind Ruckel’s and also belongs to Pete Van Hook.

“I have been fixing up a little blue house next to the trailer that had about $5,000 worth of damage done to it,” he said.

Jeff Ruckel said he has another building next to the farm supply store that he already had intended to develop to expand his business. It likely will be called into service sooner that expected.

“We have some insurance, and we will have to wait to see but, yeah, we will rebuild,” he said.
More than $20,000 in reward money is being offered for information that leads to an arrest in recent fires at East Anderson Hardwoods south of Waynesburg.

|

|

|