CORNISH — The home of co-owners of a Plainfield fruit and vegetable farm was damaged and deemed uninhabitable following a three-alarm fire on a sub-zero Monday night.
All inhabitants of the historic home were unharmed, although one of the family’s two cats required treatment for smoke inhalation, but showed signs of recovery.
When the family was eating dinner around 7 p.m. on Monday, homeowner Ray Sprague, a co-owner of Edgewater Farm, saw a strange orange glow reflecting from his tractor through a window, he said in an interview outside of the house on Tuesday morning.
After telling his son, daughter and wife to get out of the house and call 911, he ran over with a fire extinguisher and found the flames had spread across a woodpile stacked against the house’s approximately 25-foot-tall attached barn.
Sprague attempted to contain the blaze with a second fire extinguisher and ran a nearby hose over to spray water, which was “like pissing on a forest fire at that point,” he said.
After struggling to start his tractor in the freezing cold, Sprague was able to move it and other vehicles away from the fire, he said.
Around 15 firetrucks and dozens of firefighters came to the home from Cornish, Claremont, Hartland, Plainfield, Weathersfield, West Windsor and Windsor.
Sprague suspects the source of the fire was an ember flying out of an external boiler’s exhaust, he said. Sprague had fed wood into the boiler, which is the house’s main heat source, about a half hour before he saw the flames, and stuck around to watch it for about 20 minutes as he normally does, he said.
As the fire spread from the woodpile into the garage and attic of the attached barn, firefighters tore up parts of walls and ceilings to access flames, said Cornish Fire Chief Mike Boutilier.
Firefighters took turns combating the fire and warming up in firetrucks due to the sub-zero temperatures, Boutilier said. “The cold made it difficult,” he said.
The bricks of the over 250-year-old main house, many of which had been kilned from the nearby blue clay bank, resisted the fire’s spread, aiding in the firefighters’ effort, Boutillier said.
The fire was extinguished by 10 p.m., Boutilier said.
“It was really the efficiency and bravery (of the firefighters) that saved what we have in the house,” Ray Sprague said.
In addition to the humans, the family’s 10-year-old black and gray house cat, Bernie, escaped the fire unscathed, but the family’s 4-year-old cat, Johnny Utah, required treatment for smoke inhalation with a pediatric oxygen mask, said Robin Liston, a friend of the Spragues.
“She turned around, like, remarkably,” Liston said. “We took her to SAVES (Emergency Vet in Lebanon), and hopefully she’ll be okay.”
Throughout the nearly three-hour firefighting process, about 30 relatives, friends and coworkers came to support the family — some bringing pizza, donuts and coffee for the firefighters, Sprague said.
More supporters have continued to stop by to provide help for the family, moving clothes and bedding covered in soot.
“You just feel so lucky once everyone’s out of the house, you know?” Ray Sprague said, standing over charred boards in one of the rooms of an attached barn. “That’s all stuff, you know? People are important.”
After a firefighter told Jenny Sprague that they could not stay in the house that night, the couple’s two children — Hobbes, 9, and Billy, 6 — were excited to spend the night with their cousins in town, she said.
The adult Spragues stayed at the house until about 1:45 a.m. to make sure it all ended quietly.
The next morning, they waited outside of their home, full of lingering smoke, for an insurance assessor to come so they could move ahead with their next steps. While they have fire covered on their insurance, the family doesn’t expect to get any money for the restoration of the house.
“The best way to support us right now is to buy our produce,” Ray said. “It’s gonna take a lot of carrots to get this thing put back together.”
In the meantime, the family of four and two cats will rely on Edgewater housing and will hop around relatives’ houses in the area.
The children “are just starting to understand vagabond life right now,” Ray Sprague said, standing beside his wife, who had a toothbrush and toothpaste poking out of her coat pocket.