BUCKFIELD — Loren Shackford and his family got the fright of their lives late Saturday afternoon when a propane-fueled fire suddenly shot up the outside of their log cabin on Darnit Road.

They called 911 and quickly attacked the fire with buckets of water from an above-ground swimming pool and a garden hose before firefighters from seven area towns arrived to take over, he said.

There were no injuries. About 40 firefighters quickly knocked down the fire and spent a few hours ripping charred roofing apart to root out hot spots at 354 Darnit Road.

They also had to contend with a nest of angry hornets that poured out of the roof and lightning from an approaching thunderstorm.

Shackford said his wife, Roberta, his mother and their daughter and her boyfriend were inside the house preparing food after the propane grill was lit when the unexpected happened.

“We were cutting up vegetables, husking corn and getting ready to cook,” he said.

“We heard an explosion….Evidently, there was a leak or something, because the gas tank blew and we came running out and we saw fire on the outside of the house and put the garden hose on it and buckets of water out of the swimming pool and tried to get it out.”

In the initial panic, no water came out of the hose.

“We turned the faucet on but we didn’t turn the valve on on the hose, so meanwhile the gas was feeding the fire right out of the tank,” Shackford said.

“Finally, I got enough buckets of water and the hose on (the tank) and got it the hell out of there, and then we proceeded to knock the fire down on the wall, but by that time it got underneath the roof and was going all the way to the eaves, so we just tried our best to keep the roof wet.”

“That helped,” Buckfield fire Chief Tim Brooks said.

Buckfield Assistant fire Chief David Knox said that when Buckfield firefighters first arrived, smoke was billowing from the eaves.

Brooks said he had the first crew attack the fire by venting the roof while another simultaneously went inside before having to get out.

“We attacked from the roof first because we knew we were going to have a problem if we didn’t get a vent hole in there,” Knox said.

Brooks said the fire got into the vent space between the cathedral ceiling and roof, and then traveled up and over the roof.

“Thank God we called the fire department the very first thing,” Shackford said. “It makes you feel good when you see this many people show up.”

“They got here very fast,” he said. “It seemed like forever, but they were very efficient, got here immediately and got it under control. They did an excellent job.”

With no hydrants in the area, firefighters set up a temporary holding tank on Darnit Road, and then ran fire hose down the 400-foot-long driveway to tankers, shuttling water to the holding tank.

Firefighters from Buckfield, Turner, Paris, Sumner, Hebron, Canton and Norway responded, along with Buckfield Rescue.

Even though Shackford said he thought the propane tank exploded, Knox said it didn’t.

“I’m going to guess that there was a fire in the grill and it burned the hose off (the propane tank),” he said.

“So when it burned the hose off, your propane, instead of going from your hose to your burner, came out and just started shooting out up the side of the building in a vapor cloud.”

“So it didn’t really explode,” he said. “The hose burned off so the propane was just blowing freely into the air, and then it was burning in the air. That’s why it burned up the side of the house.”

Brooks said he contacted the State Fire Marshal’s Office.

Shackford said they have insurance. He said the 1.5-story log house was built in 1980 and he and his wife bought it 10 years later.

Neither Brooks nor Knox were willing to estimate damage costs.

But Shackford said that didn’t matter, because the roof could be replaced.

“I was just glad that it wasn’t worse,” he said.

tkarkos@sunjournal.com

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