Fire destroyed a building materials storage facility and its contents owned by Michael L. Annis Inc. Wednesday night.

The fire department was delayed in arriving at the blaze because Highway 74 has been closed by backwater from the Diversion Channel.

"The Gordonville Fire Department did an excellent job," said owner Michael Annis, "but the fire was too far ahead of them by the time they got here."

The company builds new houses and operates a retail home-building supply center. Neither the retail store nor the housing construction office were damaged. It is situated along Highway 74 east of the Bloomfield Road intersection.

Michael Annis, the owner, said: "It's a mess out there. We're nearly out of business now because of the floodwater and now the fire."

Annis was up all night after being informed of the fire at 11:30 p.m. Wednesday while he and his family were visiting in St. Louis.

"We managed to save some of our large construction equipment, but we lost a lot of our inventory ... insulation, paneling, plumbing fixtures, bathtubs, shower stalls, and about 40 to 50 pre-built windows," said Annis. "The fire also damaged a forklift and two low-boy trailers.

The fire was discovered by a Cape Girardeau County deputy sheriff who saw flames coming from the open storage area, which consisted of a metal roof supported by wooden beams.

Several of Annis' employees were inside the main office building on floodwatch when the fire broke out but were unaware of the fire until the deputy alerted them.

While the deputy called the sheriff's office in Jackson by radio to page the fire department, the employees rushed to the burning structure to try to move some of the construction equipment to safety.

Annis said Gordonville Fire Department investigators believe the fire was started by the spontaneous combustion of fresh bales of dry straw that were stored near the metal roof at one end of the structure.

Annis said the fire shouldn't create any serious problems with work on the 11 or 12 homes he now has under construction. "I can get resupplied from the local wholesalers," he said. "The biggest problem is cleaning up this mess and trying to fight the flood at the same time," he said.

The fire department had to detour over Route K from Gordonville to County Road 206 (Benton Hill Road) west of Cape Girardeau, then south to Bloomfield Road and west to Highway 74.

After it was determined the storage structure could not be saved, firefighters focused their effort on preventing the flames from spreading to the nearby retail store and the housing construction office.

Annis said the floodwater has backed up alongside a levee that was built on the west side of the retail store last week.

"We haven't had much walk-in business now because the highway is closed at Dutchtown and at Cape, and customers can't get to us," he said. "But we've kept the store open because we were already here anyway.

"The fire department had all the water they needed to fight the fire, but after it was out we had to pump all that water back over our levee so it wouldn't get in the retail store."