PHARSALIA – The first two volunteer firemen arriving at the scene of a garage fire discovered flames spreading to a nearby trailer’s roof and successfully fought to save the home Thursday morning.
Pharsalia Assistant Fire Chief Art Grover and firefighter Milt Blackman arrived at the scene in the department’s fire truck and found the blaze, originally called in as a non-residential structure fire, had spread from the nearby garage to the couple’s home.
“They did a heck of a job in keeping the trailer from going up in flames,” said Rita Leavitt, one of the residents living at the Town of Pharsalia home, located along County Route 10.
“When we arrived, the garage was totally involved and the fire was starting to burn its way along the side and roof of the house,” said Grover at the scene, pointing to a blackened part of the trailer now stripped of its siding. “Milt and I got here and immediately we began attacking that area of the trailer to keep the fire contained.”
Arriving at about 9:45 a.m., the two volunteers were left alone to battle the blaze for about five to ten minutes while additional personnel from the Pharsalia and McDonough Fire Departments, along with members of the Preston Fire Rescue Squad and Norwich EMS, were responding.
“There’s no sense fighting the garage fire that’s already totally done, you’ve got to make choices. The home was no more than 12 feet away,” said McDonough Fire Chief Michael Beckwith, commending the efforts of the Pharsalia Fire Department and the rest of the responders.
Neighbor Handy Bartlett was working his farm about a half a mile down the road when he noticed smoke rolling over the hill from the direction of the couple’s home.
“There was a lot of smoke, it was very visible from my farm just down the road. When I pulled up I could see the garage burning and the roof the trailer had flames just starting to creep up on it,” he said.
Bartlett said he ran to the trailer and met the two occupants, Rita and her husband Robert.
“His wife was trying to call 911 on the phone in the trailer and I told her they’d better get out of there, the roof is on fire,” he said.
The bedroom at the end of the home, the room closest to the garage, began filling with smoke as flames traveled inside the trailer’s walls.
No one was seriously injured. Leavitt, however, who said she suffered from asthma, was visibly shaking as more firemen arrived and treated at the scene by ambulance staff before being released.
As more men arrived, crews began dousing the burning framework of the completely destroyed garage and peeled siding off the trailer to put out flames hiding beneath.
“Pharsalia had a good stop on the fire setting into the trailer. The damage was kept at a minimal – it’s fixable,” said Beckwith.
Chenango County Fire Coordinator Matthew L. Beckwith said the cause of the fire was most likely a combination of a faulty wood stove and improper storage of debris near it.
“The wood stove was in pretty tough shape,” he said. The coordinator said it appeared to investigators that the stove’s legs had buckled after one of the occupants had just loaded it with wood and left it unattended.
Rita said it was the first time she and her husband had fired up the stove this season and that Robert was using it to warm his workshop in the garage.
“It probably tipped over after the legs, which weren’t bolted in, gave way,” added Beckwith.
Fire crew remained at the scene for about three hours and more than 15 firemen from the different departments responded to the fire.