Power outage leads to LaPorte County fire, destroys pairs of '55 and '57 Chevys, '66 Dodge

LAPORTE — A collection of antique cars was among the ruins of a fire that destroyed a pole barn they were stored in.

The five vehicles belonged to a now heartbroken LaPorte County couple who raced over to the electric overhead door of the burning pole barn to try to drive them out.

They couldn’t open the door, though, because of a power outage from the strong Monday night storms that passed through the area.

They couldn't open the door physically, either.

“There was just no way of getting them out,” said Nerva Kraus, who lives just outside Kingsford Heights.

Kraus, 70, said she and her husband, Daniel, often took the five beloved vehicles to car shows and on cruises during the summer.

They owned one of the cars since 1986, a blue 1957 Chevy Bel Air.

Kraus said they had all of the other vehicles, including a 1966 Dodge Coronet, for close to a decade or more.

“A lot of sentiment right there," she said. "It was quite devastating. They’re like family."

Daniel Kraus, 72, told investigators he went inside the pole barn Tuesday afternoon and started his generator to supply power to his home during the lingering outage, according to LaPorte County Police.

The generator caught fire, though, before he could wheel it out of the 50 X 80 structure.

Police said flames from the generator caught one of the inside walls of the pole barn on fire.

Kraus ran out of the structure to grab a fire extinguisher and returned to find the flames spreading too rapidly, police said.

Nerva Kraus said they went to open the overhead door of the pole barn to start driving the vehicles out of the structure, but it wouldn’t open.

It was at that moment their panicking minds realized there was no electricity to power the door.

They failed in their attempts to physically open the door and watched helplessly as the flames quickly engulfed the structure.

There was another 1957 Chevy Bel Air inside along with two 1955 Chevy Bel Airs.

Nerva Kraus, who seemed numb in disbelief over the loss, said all of the now-charred vehicles they took turns driving were in great shape.

“You just don’t expect to lose them all, all at once,” she said.

Police said the value of each car was estimated at anywhere from $20,000 to more than $100,000.

Nerva Kraus doesn’t believe any of the fire damaged cars are restorable but she’ll leave that up to her insurance company to decide.

“They’re all looking in pretty bad shape," she said. "I think they’re all totaled. I don’t know.”

No light was shed on what caused the generator to catch fire. The Krauses were among the thousands of NIPSCO customers still without power Wednesday from a storm producing over 100,000 outages in the utility’s company’s northern Indiana service area. Though there were still some outages listed on NIPSCO's website early Friday evening, the outage in Kingsbury had been restored.

This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: Power outage leads to LaPorte County fire, destroys pairs of '55 and '57 Chevys, '66 Dodge