NORTHFIELD — A late-night fire leveled a barn and the apartment it contained, but firefighters were able to save the attached main house.
“It was a tough go, but we were able to save it,” said Fire Chief Floyd “Skip” Dunnell III. “Thank God we were successful.”
The fire, at 265 Millers Falls Road, was called in just before midnight Friday.
When firefighters arrived, the barn was still standing, but fully engulfed in flames.
“We didn’t put a drop of water on the barn — that was already gone once it got going,” Dunnell said. “We concentrated our efforts on saving the main house.”
A hint of burned wood and other materials still lingered at the scene at 11:30 a.m. on Saturday. Turners Falls resident Gene Kugler, who said he lived in the house from 1945 to 1966, stopped by after his brother called to tell him about the fire. He looked nostalgically at what he said used to be the Galvis Farm and told The Recorder the house was owned by his maternal grandparents, who were Polish immigrants, and the land was used to grow potatoes.
“I’ve probably got baseball cards still hidden in the boards up there in the attic,” he said with a chuckle.
When asked about the destroyed barn, Kugler said his family had used it to store vehicles and tractors and to make repairs on them.
The house and barn were attached by an L-shaped structure that included a garage. Dunnell said the fire extended into the L, but firefighters were able to beat it back and keep it from spreading farther.
He said four 100-gallon propane tanks attached to the rear of the barn vented, sending flames skyward.
“It was like two inverted rockets with flames shooting from them,” he said.
The house belongs to Marjorie and Michael Paton. Their son, Alex, and his wife, Marissa, lived in the apartment. They all made it out unharmed.
“Alex was in the apartment and heard a ‘pop,’ and a little while later, there was smoke in the kitchen,” said Marjorie Paton. “They came to the main house, got us out, and we called 911.”
Huddled in a blanket across the street, Paton said she was “totally overwhelmed” by the response to the fire.
More than a dozen fire departments responded, sending about 22 trucks and 50 to 60 firefighters, Dunnell said.
“It was a combined effort by everybody, consisting of an aggressive attack, combined with a tanker shuttle.”
With no hydrants nearby, several tankers shuttled water to the fire from a brook nearly a mile away. Mutual aid brought in firefighters from Bernardston, Erving, Gill, Turners Falls, Greenfield, Warwick, Wendell, Orange, Montague Center, Deerfield, South Deerfield, Hinsdale and Winchester, N.H., and Guilford and Brattleboro, Vt.
Dunnell said the cause of the fire is still unclear, but the preliminary investigation suggests it was electrical in nature. Dunnell said one upstairs room in the main house was singed. Water damage was minimal, he said, but there was significant smoke damage to the main structure.
Paton said she was just glad everyone got out OK.
“All the important stuff is right here,” she said, gesturing to her family. All were able to find other relatives to stay with for the immediate future.
The house, built in 1770, was fully insured, according to Paton. On Saturday morning, he said he and his wife were waiting for Dunnell to arrive so they could go through the property and gather some belongings.