CARTHAGE — A chimney fire that spread to the walls and roof destroyed a 1½-story single-family home Thursday afternoon on Judkins Road, Carthage fire Chief Dan Skidgell said.
No one was injured at the home of Ted and Wanda Flagg at 130 Judkins Road, Peru fire Assistant Chief Dean Milligan said.
Skidgell said if they had had enough water, they could have saved the house.
“There’s no doubt in my mind,” he said.
Nearby Hutchinson Brook was iced over and a dry hydrant there was full of dirt and inoperable.
“The problem was water supply,” Skidgell said. “We couldn’t maintain adequate water supply. We couldn’t use all the water in the tankers until we got the water supply set up.”
When Peru firefighters arrived, they broke through the brook ice, put a hose in and began pulling up water with a pumper/tanker truck and getting it to tankers farther up the road. A collapsible portable water pool was also set up about 100 yards from the fire.
The insured building was a total loss.
The fire was reported at about 11:45 a.m. by a third-party caller as a possible structure fire, Carthage fire Assistant Chief Larry Blodgett said. He lives directly across from the fire station and was just sitting down to lunch when the alarm went off.
Blodgett took the department’s new 2000 Freightliner pumper firetruck and was the first to arrive. There wasn’t any fire showing at that time, just smoke coming from the eaves.
Ted Flagg was fighting the fire with a garden hose, Skidgell said. “When we got there, Ted said, ‘Chimney fire; got through the wall.'”
Ted Flagg is the brother of longtime and beloved Carthage fire Chief Kenny Flagg, who passed away in January 2013. Ted’s father-in-law, Elwin Brown, lost his house to fire, too, in the same spot where Ted’s house is located, Blodgett said.
“I was a kid when that happened in the 1980s,” Skidgell said.
Weld firefighters and Med-Care Ambulance were sent simultaneously with Carthage.
“When I heard ‘structure fire,’ I asked for all the help I could get,” Blodgett said. Dispatchers in Paris called Rumford, Mexico, Peru and Dixfield firefighters.
“I give them a big thanks, because they all worked their behinds off,” Skidgell said.
Blodgett said he hadn’t been on scene long “when you could see flames starting to creep out through” the house. He said a man ran up and offered to help. Blodgett told him to grab the fire hose nozzle while he charged the line with water.
The home’s metal roof made reaching the fire difficult. “That metal roof did not help at all,” Skidgell said. “It holds the heat in.”
That heat was so intense it split the chimney, he said. The temperature outside was 15 degrees above zero and a light wind was blowing. Blodgett and Skidgell said they were worried the wind would spread the fire or embers to a nearby garage.
“When I fired up the deck gun and I hit that roof (with highly pressurized water) and I broke one of the skylights, not on purpose, and all of a sudden, whoosh, it vented,” Blodgett said. “And when it did, all of the flames just come shooting up out of it all at once.”
“And that’s what we wanted, because we knocked out the back one (to vent the building), but we just kept running out of water, no fault to anybody,” Skidgell said.
Heavy black, white and gray smoke billowed out and could be seen for miles.
Peru, Mexico and Rumford firefighters using air packs attacked the fire from inside, while others fought it from the outside.
“When I got there and the Scott Air Pack guy showed up — Mexico and Rumford — we would have saved a lot of stuff, but then we run out of water,” Skidgell said.
“We had it once, and then we run out of water and I had to pull the guys out. Then we’d get water back, and I’d send them back in. The second time, it was just a matter of putting it out before it burned flat.”
They finally achieved knockdown at 1:30 p.m.
The Flaggs will be staying with family in the area, Skidgell said.
According to Town Office records, the house is valued at $83,178.
CARTHAGE — After helping to fight Thursday afternoon’s structure fire that destroyed Ted and Wanda Flagg’s house at 130 Judkins Road, Weld firefighters learned they needed to call a tow truck for their pumper/tanker truck.
They weren’t sure if they lost the water pump, transfer case or transmission in the 1999 Ford pumper. They were in the process of trying to pump water to waiting firefighters when the pump bound up.
Carthage fire Chief Dan Skidgell said he hoped the problem isn’t bad. “But, it didn’t sound good,” he said.
Carthage fire Assistant Chief Larry Blodgett said it could have been caused by the weather, because they were pulling water out of the river and brook and “every once in a while you pull up gravel and grit.”
“It’s the nature of the beast,” Blodgett said. “And you don’t know it until suddenly you need to pump (water) and it decides it don’t want to work anymore.”
Bob Riley, owner of M/T Pockets garage and towing of Dixfield, was called. When he arrived, he lifted the front end of the firetruck with his tractor-trailer truck tow truck, but couldn’t pull it away until after the Weld firefighters emptied all the water out.
Skidgell said the Carthage Volunteer Fire Department would be on standby to assist Weld should they get called out to a structure fire. “If you’re alone and they get called out, bring the tanker,” he told Blodgett.
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