Firefighters quickly put up a ladder to bring him down while also evacuating two other people from the building at 211 N. 12th St. No one was injured.

The fire was reported at 1:41 p.m. When firefighters arrived, they found flames coming out of two second-story windows in the front of the building, the man on the roof and two people in a first floor apartment.

Fire Chief Steve Hergenreter said the man was in a second-floor apartment in the rear of the building. He went out a window and onto a roof that covers a portion of the first floor that extends out from the rear of the building.

Hergenreter said the people in the first-floor apartment were not in immediate danger.

-Messenger photo by Bill Shea
Flames are coming out of two second-floor windows at 211 N. 12th St. Sunday afternoon as Fort Dodge firefighters prepare to take a hoseline into the building to extinguish them. No one was injured in the blaze.

Apparently no one was home in the apartment where the fire started, he said.

Firefighters took a hoseline up the stairs and confined the fire to the apartment on the second floor in the front of the building. Hergenreter said that apartment sustained serious fire damage, while the rest of the second floor sustained heat and smoke damage.

The cause of the fire remained under investigation Sunday. Hergenreter said Sunday’s incident was the second fire in that building in about a year.

The house, constructed in 1900, was divided into four apartments many years ago.

It is owned by Leimbach Enterprises LLC, of St. Joseph, Missouri, according to online records of the Webster County Assessor’s Office.

Fort Dodge police responded to the scene along with city firefighters.