Lyme
No one was injured, though owners Karen and David Allen, standing outside and watching firefighters work to extinguish the flames, were unsure of whether the home would be salvageable. They bought the house, built in 1790, in 2007.
Route 10 was closed for a few hours, with one lane of traffic reopened at about 2:50 p.m.; firefighters from eight towns cleared the scene shortly after 4 p.m., according to Lyme Fire Chief Michael Mundy.
Mundy said the fire was particularly difficult to battle because it was located in the tongue-and-groove woodwork of the second-floor walls and ceiling spaces.
“It was easy (for it) to travel and hard to find,” he said.
The cause of the fire is unknown, according to Mundy.
The home suffered extensive fire damage to the second floor, and water and smoke damage to the first floor; if the structure can be saved, it will be due to the action of the responders and the quick initial response from the Allens’ adult daughter, Katy Allen, Karen Allen said.
Allen said she was working the phones at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, where she works coordinating patient services, in an effort to find an empty bed for a patient when her own cellphone rang with a call from her daughter.
“She said, ‘Mom, I’m so sorry to tell you this,’ and for some reason I thought she was going to say her leg had been amputated or broken or something,” Karen Allen said.
Katy Allen, a farmer and college student along New Hampshire’s coast, was in town to help organize a charity effort to send materials to activists at Standing Rock in North Dakota. She was home alone on Friday, and leaving the house to go for a walk when she noticed smoke coming from a second-floor window.
“I ran back inside to see where it was coming from,” she said. “My heart was pounding.”
Once inside, upon seeing the large volume of smoke coming from an unknown second-floor point of origin, she called 911 and exited the house with the family pet, a cat named Squirrel.
Lyme Police Chief Shaun O’Keefe was the first to arrive on the scene. He spoke with Katy Allen briefly and entered the home with a fire extinguisher, but said he quickly realized he would need help.
“I couldn’t see because of the smoke, and there was water dripping on me,” he said.
Soon, the two-alarm fire had drawn emergency responders from Lyme, Fairlee, Norwich, Hanover, Orford, Thetford, Bradford, Hartford and the Grafton County Sheriff’s Office.
“We had to keep fighting it,” Mundy said. “We had to keep pulling down ceiling and fighting it. It was a pretty demanding fire.”
The flames, which were contained to the second floor, were no longer visible by about 1:30 p.m., at which time firefighters using chainsaws and large hooks were opening holes in the metal gabled roof so that they could pump in water from Post Pond, located directly across Route 10.
The Allens said they were grateful that no one was injured, and thankful to have the support of the community; they planned to sleep at the home of a friend Friday night.
A teacher-turned information technology director at Mascoma Valley Regional High School, David Allen said he rushed to the scene as soon as his wife called him. The home is insured, he said.
He stood with his arms around his family, asking a firefighter to retrieve an iPad from his first-floor bedroom and occasionally kissing the top of his daughter’s head.
“The important thing is no one is hurt,” he said.
A relative has established an online campaign to accept contributions at www.gofundme.com/allenhousefire, according to Karen Allen.
An outbuilding on the 5.4-acre property was unharmed.
Matt Hongoltz-Hetling can be reached at mhonghet@vnews.com or 603-727-3211.