What a strange little house!
The fire doesn't seem to have been too bad, but its still a mess inside, I guess.
And still a bit of snow around...
Here its gone now. We had a rather hefty storm a few days ago, that caused a lot of damage. Since, its gone warmer to about 10C now.
Thats ok for me - anything above +10C is not real winter.
Btw, whats that thing on the road in the last picture - a portable water basin or something like that?
It was a very bad fire, they just knocked it down quickly so it doesn't look so bad from the outside. The kitchen was completely gutted, and there was extensive heat and smoke damage in the rest of the building. That construction is pretty typical of older business blocks in Indiana; I'd guess it dates back around a hundred years or so. Usually they'd be connected to similar buildings, filling up a block.
That is a portable water basin, and the guys there were in the process of draining it to get it back on the truck. It's called a dump tank, and usually holds one or two thousand gallons of water. The tankers can drop them off, fill them, then go back for more water while the engines draft water out of the dump tanks. It ensures a more steady water supply at rural fires--Wolf Lake is a very small community, and doesn't have a water system of its own.