WEST LEBANON – Seven Dartmouth students were evacuated without injury from a second-alarm fire at a rental property on Route 10 in the early morning hours on Thursday.
Just before 3 a.m., multiple 911 calls reported a building fire at 384 North Main St., the Lebanon Fire Department stated in a news release on Thursday.
Arriving less than 10 minutes later, firefighters from the West Lebanon Fire Station encountered “a heavy volume of fire involving the front portion of the building,” the release stated.
“The incident was upgraded to a second alarm for a working structure fire,” the release added.
First knocking down the heavy exterior fire, firefighters then deployed hose lines into the building to extinguish the remaining fire.
“All occupants were asleep at the time the fire began and were alerted to the fire by working smoke detectors,” according to the Lebanon Fire Department.
384 North Main St. is a two-story residential property assessed at $545,000 and owned by Kish Consulting and Contracting, according to property records.
Seven tenants lived in the duplex, with three in one apartment and four in the other, said Jolin Kish, who runs Kish Consulting and Contracting, in a phone interview on Thursday.
All seven are Dartmouth graduate students, Kish said.
The students safely evacuated the building without injury.
“Apparently, the college has found someplace for them to go,” Kish said.
Dartmouth has secured temporary housing for the students for the next several days “as we work to identify long-term housing options,” Jana Barnello, director of Media Relations and Communications Strategy at the college, said in an email to the Valley News.
“(The Tuck School of Business) has already provided them loaner laptops and fellow students wanting to help are prepping care packages and organizing food trains,” Barnello added.
The fire was declared under control around 40 minutes after firefighters arrived, the Lebanon Fire Department said in Thursday’s news release. No firefighters were injured during the incident.
Fire department personnel, including mutual aid agencies from the Hanover, Hartford, Canaan, Windsor and Enfield fire departments, remained on scene “conducting overhaul and checking for fire extension until approximately 6:15 a.m.,” the release said.
The Plainfield and Woodstock fire departments and Canaan Ambulance provided station coverage in Lebanon while Lebanon crews worked to extinguish the fire.
Kish said she was unable to share the estimated cost of damages as she waits on word from the fire department.
“Most of (the building) looks like a loss from what I can see from the outside, but the investigators said they were going to … get back to us,” she said.
The building isn’t structurally sound, she said, adding that the fire started “on the porch outside.”
“It’s not a cosmetic repair,” she said. “Based on the looks of what I saw, it’s going to be at least six months to fix that.”
The Lebanon Fire Department emphasized the importance of working smoke alarms in Thursday’s news release.
“The occupants were asleep when the fire occurred, and the smoke alarms activated, providing the warning they needed to safely escape the building,” the department stated.
The cause of the fire remains under investigation.
“I’m glad everyone got out safely,” Kish said. “That’s really the best you can hope for when things like this happen.”
