VOLGA — Mark Leite’s recent heart surgery might have just saved his life for more than medical reasons: His home northwest of Volga caught fire and burned down early on April 3 — but Leite wasn’t there. Instead, he was in Brookings, continuing to heal from the surgery in Sioux Falls.
Leite said he’s the only one who lives in the home, which has been in the family for more than a century, and that he will remain focused on getting well again.
“I’ve got a place to go after I leave here down to my son’s place and stay with them for a few weeks until I can drive again,” he told The Brookings Register. “From there, we’ll wing it.”
His son, Andrew Leite, lives south of Volga.
“They woke him up in the middle of the night wanting to know where I was because my vehicles were there,” Mark Leite said of his neighbors. “Nobody knew I was in the hospital.”
According to information from the Brookings County Sheriff’s Office, the call came in at 1:12 a.m. on April 3 for the residence at 46294 207th St., roughly 5 miles northwest of Volga.
“A neighboring resident called 911 after hearing several loud noises coming from the residence,” Assistant Sheriff Dave Biteler wrote in the news release. “Upon looking toward the property, the caller observed the home fully engulfed in flames.”
The Volga Fire Department and the sheriff’s office responded to the scene, and deputies confirmed that Leite’s home was fully involved. Biteler wrote that a vehicle near the structure was moved away from the home to protect it from the fire and to allow firefighters better access to the scene.
Leite told the Register said he spent 10 to 11 days in a Sioux Falls hospital after the surgery before coming to Brookings to continue the healing process.
“My neighbors kind of — they keep an eye on the place and then the vehicles hadn’t moved, and I guess they were starting to think something might be wrong,” Leite said.
He expects to spend another two to three weeks or so in Brookings, then another few weeks at his son’s place.
“Hopefully I can figure out what to do from there,” Leite said. “I have never been one to ask anybody for something if I can’t get it on my own.”
Injecting a bit of dry humor — something he does because “it doesn’t do any good to cry” — he said, “(Andrew) called me this morning (April 3) and asked me if I wanted to go for a ride — come and get me and go out and see (the house). I said ‘Yeah,’ but then I wanted to call him back and tell him to grab me a jacket, but I don’t have a jacket anymore.”
All that said, “Nobody got hurt, and that’s the main thing,” Leite finished. “Thank you to all the fire departments that showed up.”
The response to the blaze eventually involved every fire department in the county — Aurora, Brookings, Bruce, Elkton, Sinai, Volga and White — along with Brookings Ambulance. Firefighters were at the scene for roughly four and a half hours, Biteler wrote.
No damage estimate nor cause of the fire were available April 6. VFD Chief Dave Jacobsen said there didn’t appear to be anything suspicious about the fire.
Leite said his grandfather built the home in 1910. “Everything was shipped on wagons and horses from Bruce at the railhead.”
He said his family raised cattle, pigs, chickens, and crops there for at least a century, if not longer. Nowadays, though, the land is rented out to other farmers and Leite just lived in the house.
Leite said the blaze damaged his home beyond repair.
“For what I had it insured for, it won’t rebuild what I had — oh, well, way it goes,” he said. “I was just lucky I was (in Brookings) instead of there.”
— Contact Mondell Keck at [email protected].
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