Family Losses Everything in Fire
FireFighter1337 found this article on http://www.recorder.com/story.cfm?id_no=5101220 | Posted: June 14th, 2008Bernardston-A fire destroyed a family's log home Tuesday night, sending a pillar of smoke in the sky visible for miles and requiring the response of 12 fire departments.
Julie Coburn said that she had been putting in a load of laundry, her husband, Fred, had been watching the news and her 13-year-old daughter, Zoe, had been outside talking on the phone when Fred first noticed that there was a fire upstairs.
The Coburns found the room upstairs, along with the ceiling and attic engulfed in flames.
Coburn said that she and her family left 384 Foxhill Road -- their home of about 12 or 13 years -- immediately, without salvaging any of their possessions, all destroyed.
Coburn said that her home wasn't insured and that the family's cat may have been in the building. Bernardston Fire Chief Peter Shedd said that the cat still had not been found by about 9:45 Tuesday night.
The fire was called in at 5:09 p.m, Shedd said.
By about 6 p.m., the roof of the log cabin had caved in. Firefighters sprayed water on the front and back of the blackened log cabin, whose interior was filled with thick smoke.
Coburn's older daughter, Lauren Coburn, 17, had just come home from work to watch her home burn. Her eyes were stained with tears as she sat on a nearby trailer and watched. A friendly old black Labrador, Jackal, sat beside her before wandering over to say hello to the firefighters. Coburn's older brother, Shane, 19, who had also come home from work to see his home on fire, walked down Foxhill Road wildly cursing at the fire.
After being notified of the fire, Shedd immediately requested two brush trucks. Minimal wind helped keep the fire from spreading, but dry conditions easily could have caused the house fire to spread to the surrounding forest. The leaves of trees several feet away from the house were singed and firefighters sprayed water onto a car near the house that had also lit.
Although fire trucks did not have difficulty ascending the steep hill, it was particularly difficult for them to fight the fire there because all of the water used to put it out had to be brought up because there were no nearby water sources, Shedd said. Shedd said that after the arrival of the first two fire trucks, water only lasted five to six minutes before the first responders at the scene had to wait for assistance.
The fire marshal was on the scene late Tuesday and the cause of the fire was still under investigation.
Along with Bernardston, firefighters from Turners Falls, Greenfield, South Deerfield, Old Deerfield, Erving, Northfield, Leyden, Gill, Shelburne Center, along with Vernon and Guilford in Vermont responded.
Shedd was glad that the highway crew had just fully opened the narrow road last year so that people could go all the way around it.
'Trying to have big trucks pass each other could have been quite a problem,' Shedd said.
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