VAN BUREN — Smoke still rose above the Current River on the west side of Van Buren Wednesday morning, hours after a fire destroyed The Landing, an icon in the community for decades.

“We’re heartbroken, obviously, but we care as much for the community and how it impacts them. I’m at a loss for words,” said Matt Bedell, son of owners Tom and Della Bedell.

The fire began sometime around 12:30 a.m., Bedell said, in the kitchen area of the Blue Heron Restaurant.

harred chairs sit among the debris at The Landing in Van Buren, which was destroyed in an overnight fire early Wednesday.Paul Davis ~ Daily American Republic

“We don’t have any idea how it started, but it looks like it started in the kitchen,” Bedell said as he and his younger brother, Jeremy, surveyed the damage.

Volunteer firefighters from six departments worked the fire, which quickly spread to the adjacent motel building.

“We called several departments for mutual aid just because we have limited water supply in that area,” Curt Majors said, fire chief for the Van Buren Volunteer Fire Department.

“The main thing we needed was manpower assistance,” he said. “We’ve got about 18 volunteers in our department and they were pretty worn out.

“We really appreciated all of the help we got from those departments.”

Firefighters from Ellsinore, Van Buren, Ellington, North Reynolds County, Piedmont and Winona battled the blaze.

“We got the call at 12:50 for volunteer firefighters. I arrived on scene about 1:05,” said Van Buren volunteer firefighter Paul Jarrell, who also is an employee of The Landing.

“It was so fast and so hot,” Jarrell said of the blaze. “We tried to contain it to the main building around the offices and the restaurant area. We tried … We really, really tried, man.

“Unfortunately it did jump over when we were trying to suppress it, and it went very quickly after that.”

Jarrell estimated that from the time the fire jumped from the restaurant building to the north end of the motel building, until it reached the south end, was probably just two minutes.

Two firefighters suffered heat exhaustion, Jarrell said, while some fire trucks had headlights melted from the intense heat.

Cody Ogden was traveling west on Highway 60 around 2 a.m. when he noticed something wasn’t right.

“At first, it looked like a lot of fog. All of a sudden, the lights turned orange and I thought something is on fire,” Odgen explained.

As he approached closer, he could see the restaurant was on fire.

“Once it jumped, you could see the rooftop smoking on the other side. It just took off,” Ogden said.

The blaze, Ogden said, was so large it could be felt from the east side of the Current River.

“I was clear across the river and I could feel the heat over there,” he said.

About a dozen of the motel’s 41 rooms, Jeremy Bedell said, were occupied, but nobody was hurt.

Michael Alba and Jessica Edmondson were staying at The Landing after a day of floating on the river and recalled a harrowing experience.

“We were asleep by 10. At some point close to 1 a.m., I woke up and smelled something. I woke her up and said ‘hey, do you smell that.’ She said it’s probably the A/C and she rolled back over to go to sleep,” Alba recalled.

“I opened the back window and I could not see out of it,” he added. “It was just white smoke. I opened the door and smoke started billowing into it our room.”

Alba woke Edmondson and the pair left quickly.

“I was trying to find the staircase and I couldn’t see anything. We couldn’t breathe, and we were feeling our way down the hall,” Edmondson said. “I don’t think we would have been able to stay conscious much longer if we hadn’t found it.”

The pair woke a woman in a neighboring room and she got out as well.

After they got to the safety of the parking lot, Alba, the neighbor and a police officer went door-to-door, alerting everyone else in the motel to get out.

The pair lost everything they brought with them because they grabbed nothing as they escaped. With the keys to Alba’s car in the burned room, they couldn’t start his car, which melted in the parking lot.

By daylight, the fire was out, leaving the Bedell family to process what had happened.

“We’re really just heartbroken about it, and we’re trying to get our heads around what’s happened,” Matt Bedell said. “It’s not necessarily the building, it’s just all the memories. We weren’t able to get anything out.”

“It’s very surreal,” Jeremy Bedell said, “and we’re deciding how to assess the situation.”

Lost in the fire were family heirlooms and memories.

“This place was like their second home,” Matt Bedell said of his parents, so there were a lot of personal items in the business.

“I think for them, they’re thinking about their lifetime effort and work, and also what is in there and the details that go with it,” Jeremy Bedell said of his parents.

Still, the Bedells were concerned for the community.

“The impact to the community is devastating, and there’s a lot of people that today are jobless,” Matt Bedell said.

On average, the business employed more than 100 people during the summer and about half that during the off season.

Neither one was yet aware of any support system set up to help those affected by the fire.

“The Landing is near and dear to the community of Van Buren,” said Jarrell, who recalled how the Bedell family rebuilt after the facility was damaged in the May 2017 record flood of the Current River.

“Tom busted ass to get that place back open in six or seven weeks, then this happens, and it’s heartbreaking,” Jarrell said.

All business operations have been shut down for now, the Bedell brothers said.

“We’ve obviously ceased restaurant operations, but we’ve also ceased floating operations because we lost everything we use to do that … communications, keys to the vehicles, everything,” Matt Bedell said.

“Our ability to function and operate is gone,” Jeremy Bedell added.

The nearby River Centre, which was undamaged, will be used as a base of operations temporally, they said.

“We don’t have any computers, and we’re trying to work on getting a phone line established,” Matt Bedell said.

The upcoming weekend was booked full, he said, but without computers, booking information and phones, they have no way to contact customers directly to tell them about what happened.

“We have no ability to call. Everything you go to do, it’s not there,” Matt Bedell said. “We are using our Facebook page to communicate.”

The state fire Marshall was to be in Van Buren Wednesday to investigate the fire.

In the meantime, the Bedells have been inundated with phone calls and text messages of support.

“The calls and texts coming in this morning are overwhelming,” Matt Bedell said.

“We really appreciate the support of the community,” Jeremy Bedell added.