No was injured in a fire late last week that completely destroyed a three-story Holiday Island apartment building and took local responders, mostly volunteers, nearly 40 hours to completely extinguish.

The Holiday Island Fire Department, with initial assistance from three other area departments, battled the blaze and numerous rekindles that destroyed a six-unit apartment building at 86 Hillside Drive.

The initial call reporting the fire came in at 12:52 a.m. Friday, June 2, and a first responder arrived seven minutes later to observe the third level of the building engulfed in flames, according to Holiday Island Fire Chief Randy Ates.

“The witnesses that I’ve talked to stated the fire moved extremely fast,” said Ates, who added that five of the six units in the building were occupied when the fire started. “When our first arriving fire truck pulled up to the scene, he noted that the entire third floor was fully involved and the second floor was starting to burn as well. The fire was extending to vehicles in the parking lot and was about to encroach on the building to the west, which is also a three-story apartment building.”

Responders were able to fend the fire off from the adjacent building, but four vehicles in the parking lot were totaled, the fire chief said.

Ates said he requested assistance from personnel and a ladder truck from the Eureka Springs Fire Department, and departments from Inspiration Point and Eagle Rock also assisted during the early hours of the fire, which wasn’t completely extinguished until 4 p.m. Saturday, June 3.

No cause for the fire has been determined as of Tuesday afternoon, June 6, but Ates said the Carroll County Sheriff’s Office was investigating, which is customary with such a fire.

“It’s pretty typical,” Ates said of law enforcement handling the investigation. “We don’t have a dedicated arson investigator. And anytime we have a big fire and we’re not sure what happened, just partially out of a courtesy and partially in case it does turn out that it might be arson or something happened … we make sure to bring the sheriff’s department in.”

Ates said the third floor of the building collapsed onto the second floor, causing the entire building to become unstable during the early stages of the response.

“The third floor collapsed onto the second, which then twisted the whole second floor that was left and the center actually shifted several feet and made it dangerous for us to approach the building because of the potential for further collapse and the building completely coming apart,” he said. “The exterior of the building proceeded to collapse on both sides of the ends, kind of a pancake. When you have layers of pancake right on a plate, it’s the same thing, unfortunately, with a lot of voids and pockets that we couldn’t get to to extinguish the fire.

“We fought the fire until daybreak and contacted Holiday Island Road Department to see if they could bring out a backhoe and maybe knock the rest of the twisted area down so we could approach the building.”

The backhoe, however, wasn’t long enough, Ates said, making the plan a danger for the operator.

“That caused real problems and the fire reignited several times,” he said. “Our poor volunteers had a very long two days.”

Ates said neighboring responders were released back to their areas just after daybreak the morning of the fire, but his volunteers rotated shifts until the fire was completely out.

“They did Holiday Island proud the number of times they showed up,” the chief said. “And then Sunday, after there was no fire and everybody was exhausted, a bunch of them showed up to wash the hose, put things back on the truck, fix things that broke. We just have got a fantastic group of volunteers here.”

Various posts about the fire and the responses were on the Holiday Island Fire Department Facebook page in the days after the response.

One specifically thanked the neighboring agencies that assisted while another, a personal message from Ates, thanked his team.

“We have worked ourselves to the point of exhaustion, left with as much strength as a limp dish rag and suffered from the heat and smoke headaches. This has been a very wearying time,” the post reads. “All I can say is I am extremely proud of you and our fire department. You stepped up and handled a major fire that would tax even a large agency. Thank you, each and every one, for all the help and dedication. We could not have handled this so well without you.”

Considering the fire started just before 1 a.m., when most of the displaced residents were likely sleeping, Ates said the fact that everyone got out of the building safely was “divine providence.”

“I believe that something happened to wake everybody up, to get them out,” he said. “The stories I’ve heard have just been remarkable how people found out there was a fire. One lady stated she just simply could not sleep, so she stepped outside and happened to see the fire on the top floor. And that’s when everybody was alerted there was a fire.

“Another gentleman said that something woke him up and he couldn’t figure out why he was hearing what sounded like fireworks. And then he looked outside and just in time, saw fire dropping onto his balcony from the floor above.

“It’s just stories like that of people being woken up by just unusual circumstances that otherwise might not have awakened.”

According to the chief, the complex, which included one-bedroom and two-bedroom units, is owned by Key Ventures of Bentonville.