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Beaver Dam community collects donations for neighbors displaced by deadly apartment blast

Posted at 6:36 PM, Mar 08, 2018
and last updated 2018-03-08 19:36:42-05

Investigators Thursday said they still hadn't definitely identified the man killed Monday's explosion at a Beaver Dam apartment complex. 

Volatile chemicals found inside the unit, along with the victim's body, required law enforcement officers to carry out a controlled blast at the building on Wednesday afternoon. 

Residents of the other apartment buildings in the Village Glen complex, evacuated since Monday, were allowed to return to their homes Wednesday night. 

But the occupants of the 16 units in the apartment building where the two explosions occurred were still not able to move back in or even return to retrieve personal items, according to Dodge County Sheriff Dale Schmidt. 

Chief John Kreuziger, of the Beaver Dam Police Department, said the level of structural damage to the building was still being assessed. 

An account has been set up through all Horicon Bank locations in Dodge County to collect monetary donations for the displaced residents. 

At the St. Vincent de Paul Society of Dodge County, store manager Benjamin Nelson said the organization has been collecting and handing out clothing, personal items and hotel vouchers to the neighbors unable to return to their homes. 

"We kind of just help in any way we possibly can," Nelson said.

At a closed-door meeting with the evacuated residents, Nelson said he also offered to help them find and furnish new apartments in the event that their current homes are eventually ruled uninhabitable. 

"I just printed off 24 apartment listings here in Beaver Dam and laid them out on a table so the residents could look through them," Nelson said. 

"If the residents of those apartments need new furniture, or a new bed, because of water or smoke damage or whatever has happened to their personal belongings, we've also offered to help with that as well," he also said. 

Nelson said St. Vincent de Paul is accepting donations of clothes, housewares and personal items that it can hand out to the displaced residents.