CHESTERFIELD, Mo. – Crews responded to a vacant house fire that began late Wednesday afternoon on the back deck of a vacant home on Greenleaf Valley Drive in Chesterfield.

Firefighters from multiple agencies responded with more than 20 fire trucks to battle the intense blaze. 

When crews arrived, the flames engulfed the hill where the home sat, with smoke billowing into the sky.

The extreme elements from the winter weather were met with a dangerous battle to extinguish the flames. 

Arriving at the fiery scene was one of many challenges firefighters faced to combat the flames. The snowfall late Tuesday night brought difficulties for responders to get close to the house. 

“They had to stop at the base of the hill and that’s pretty much where our firefighting operations laid there, so all the hose lines needed to be advanced from the firetrucks up to the scene of the fire (and) had to be manually pulled up by the women or the firefighters,” said Les Crews, assistant chief of the Monarch Fire Protection District

Monarch Fire Protection District said that crews carried the heavy hose equipment up a steep 500-foot hill to the home.

Although de-icing products were used to make the job convenient for crew members, they were less effective, as the single-digit temperatures and negative wind chills became an extra strain firefighters faced.

“When we start flowing the water, we do get the freezing conditions that the firefighters were having to combat. There’s no way for them to stay dry,”  said Les Crews, assistant chief from the Monarch Fire Protection District. “Some of them are more fairly saturated with just the water (and) the wind blowing the water back on, so it’s pretty miserable conditions for those men and women (who) are out there.” 

Periodically, crews rotated out and underwent medical checks to ensure they were not in serious danger.

“We rehab our personnel, where we pull them off the actual active scene (and) pull them down to the back of an ambulance or vehicle that we have on-site. (We) checked their vitals to give them an opportunity to warm up and then got that counter-rotation,” Crews said. “We’ve got people on deck standing  by that have been through the rehab process and those are actively fighting the fire.” 

According to officials, no one was injured and the owners of the home are out of town. The cause of the fire is still being investigated.