Woodstock, Hartland, Quechee Firefighters Respond To WRJ Blaze

July 25, 2011

Woodstock, Hartland, Quechee Firefighters Respond To WRJ Blaze

July 24, 2011
By Eric Francis
www.thevermontstandard.com

WHITE RIVER JUNCTION – Firefighters from Woodstock, Hartland, and the Quechee substation were among those from eight towns who responded Saturday evening to an apartment building fire at 36 Cascadnac Avenue on the edge of downtown White River Junction.
The two-alarm blaze a couple of streets to the east of the Shady Lawn Motel sent smoke drifting for blocks and brought crowds of neighbors out onto their lawns as darkness fell.
First floor tenant Anthony Maccherone spotted the fire shortly before 9 p.m. and it was his call which sent Hartford’s fire engines racing to the scene.
“I stepped out to get a breath of fresh air before I went to bed and I saw a red flashing light,” Maccherone, a chef who has lived in the building for the past eight years, recalled.
“I thought there was an emergency vehicle outside. I looked around the corner and saw nothing and then looked up and saw flames coming out of the third floor window, which is my landlord’s apartment,” Maccherone said.

“I just went into emergency mode and reacted,” Maccherone recalled, choking up with emotion as he watched firefighters battling the fire Saturday evening. “I immediately rushed in and got my wife and our cat and got out and called 911 on my cell phone.”
Flames were rolling out one of the gabled windows on the third floor when the first engines arrived so crews quickly struck the second alarm, which eventually brought manpower and equipment in from Norwich, Hanover, Lebanon, Plainfield, and Windsor as well.
On Sunday afternoon, Hartford Fire Captain Ray Bushey said that from a preliminary investigation it appeared the fire had begun in the building owner’s third-floor apartment.
“There was a bed right directly behind that window (where the fire was venting) and there was power strip on top of that bed,” Bushey noted.
Witnesses said there was also what appeared to be floor-type box fan that had been placed in that same window and presumably hooked up to that power strip.
Although firefighters smashed out several windows around the upstairs, pulled down some walls and partitions, and peeled back sections of antique slate roofing tiles in order to find all of the areas that were burning before declaring the fire under control shortly before 10 p.m., Captain Bushey said the actual damage to building was on the low side.
“It was really contained to that bedroom area and the attic. It’s hard to imagine that they won’t repair it,” Bushey said, adding that water damage to the lower floors turned out to be “very little.”
“The guys did a great job of getting salvage covers in place quickly and salvaging the lower apartments’ contents,” the captain said.