Fire claims Cottage Hills home

Photo of John Badman
John Badman, Staff Writer

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Firefighters are silhouetted by the flames engulfing a house early Friday morning in the first block of Circle Drive in Cottage Hills. Four fire departments battled the flames for three hours. 
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Firefighters are silhouetted by the flames engulfing a house early Friday morning in the first block of Circle Drive in Cottage Hills. Four fire departments battled the flames for three hours. 

John Badman|The Telegraph

COTTAGE HILLS — Firefighters from four local departments fought in vain early Friday to save a house in the first block of Circle Drive in Cottage Hills.

Cottage Hills firefighters received the call at 3:45 a.m. Firefighters from Bethalto, Rosewood Heights and Meadowbrook were dispatched to help with the blaze.

Firefighters arrived to find the house fully engulfed in flames that leapt 40 feet in the air from where the roof had burned away.

The sole resident escaped the blaze, but the house was completely destroyed. 

An initial investigation reportedly pointed to the fire starting in or near a wood-burning stove. Firefighters tore down a chain-link fence in front of the house to allow better access to the fire. 

Firefighters remained on the scene for more than three hours. No injuries were reported.

John Badman is a 1982 graduate of SIU-Carbondale, with a major in cinema and photography and a minor in law enforcement administration of justice. He has worked at The Telegraph in Alton full-time for 39 years and has been named the National Press Photographers Association’s Region-5 Photographer of the Year six times.

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