Hartford Village
Hartford Fire Chief Scott Cooney said nobody was injured in the fire, which was reported around 8:35 a.m. But one of the units was heavily damaged, and residents of the other two units have had to find alternative housing until electricity and other services are restored, authorities said.
The loss of housing for a working-class family underscores the increasingly tight rental housing market in the Upper Valley.
“My first thing, all I think about is where are my grandkids going to live?” said Lisa Conrad, who moved into the building five years ago with her husband and three grandchildren and lived in the two-story unit where the fire was contained. “I mean, that we can afford to live? The rents are disgusting.”
As she spoke standing outside of the house in the November cold, her husband, Chris Conrad, came out of their soot-blackened apartment carrying their “Christmas Fund” — an office cooler-sized water jug that was about a third full of coins.
“My wife lost all of her medicine for her heart and stuff,” he said, his tone steady. “Everything on the first floor is lost.”
The Conrads and their neighbors, the Murphys, were at work or school when the fire broke out — the fire chief said it seemed to have started on the Conrads’ kitchen counter — but within 90 minutes of the first report, the news was spreading rapidly through a phone network of the residents’ family and friends. Mike Murphy said a friend came to Kleen Laundry in Lebanon, where Murphy has worked for the past 33 years, to tell him that his house was on fire.
“What did I think?” Murphy said. “I got to get to my (expletive) home.”
Murphy found his own unit, on the east end of the building, was virtually unscathed, though first responders had broken the front door to gain entry while fighting the fire.
In the early afternoon, Murphy spoke while fiddling with the front doorknob as his adult son, also named Mike Murphy, held two Rottweilers by their collars to keep them inside. When the firefighters broke through the front door, they said, one of the Rottweilers (Unidilla, named for a dirtbike race track in upstate New York) had panicked and hid from them in the bathtub.
The older Murphy said his main concern was for the Conrads. He liked the family. He and Chris Conrad used to engage in friendly cookoffs.
Friday’s fire, he said, “was the cookoff nobody wanted.”
When Chris Conrad heard the news, he was working on top of a roof in Sharon for his company, White River Junction-based H.P. Roofing.
Unlike Murphy, when he sped home, his worst fears were realized. In addition to the loss of personal property, which was not insured, three of the family’s five cats were found dead, with the other two missing.
As they began to come to grips with the challenges that lay before them, their primary concern was housing.
The Red Cross arranged for temporary hotel housing, but they hadn’t yet had time to consider mid-range and long-term accommodations. Lisa Conrad said it would be hard to find an equivalent rental because the Ferry Boat Crossing property was owned by Jeff Acker, Conrad’s boss at the roofing company.
“We were getting a good deal,” she said.
Acker said during a phone interview Friday afternoon that he planned to take whatever steps were needed to repair the damage.
“Obviously, it’s a very sad situation,” he said. “Chris has worked for me for 10 years. Fortunately, everybody was safe.”
The house, at 117 Ferry Boat Crossing, was built in 1900 and has an assessed value of $163,500, according to town records.
Andrew Winter is executive director of the Twin Pines Housing Trust, which manages more than 400 affordable housing units throughout the Upper Valley for low and moderate income families.
Winter said the Conrads are one of many families in housing situations that are in some way dependent on personal connections. When those situations end, for whatever reason, families “suddenly find themselves facing homelessness,” Winter said. “It’s more common in the Upper Valley than one might think.”
Often, he said, such families are not prepared to handle the financial shock of abruptly entering the rental market, which has only gotten tighter over the last few years.
“In the core towns, we’re not seeing rents falling,” he said. “We’re seeing rents rising.”
When Winter heard about the fire, he worked to find housing for the Conrads, but learned that, with a 10-family waiting list for one property, none of their available offerings fit the family’s size and income profile.
“The rental market is really tight in the Upper Valley,” Winter said. He networked with other landlords Friday afternoon, but most said that they either had no units available, or a stack of rental applications for units that were open.
“I did connect the Conrads with one landlord who may be able to help,” he said.
Friends and family members also were reaching out to the Conrads about the housing problem. As Chris Conrad prepared to enter the house to salvage more items, he caught sight of Chris Wheeler, a plumber who is the paternal grandfather of one of the three children in the Conrad family.
“How you doing?” Conrad said.
“Better than you,” answered Wheeler. “I’m checking into a place down in Hartland for you. Three bedroom, Cape style house. It was empty a week ago.”
Wheeler said he hoped his granddaughter could stay at his house for a few days, “until they get settled. Take some of the burden off them, I guess.”
Once Conrad thanked him for the housing tip, and walked away, Wheeler said the Conrads were good people.
“They’re taking care of the grandkids, you know?” he said. “They could use any help they could get.”
Matt Hongoltz-Hetling can be reached at mhonghet@vnews.com or 603-727-3211.