We recovered from the ice storm after Sunday`s temps finally warmed up and then Friday, we braced for another round of winter weather, snow and sleet both coming in starting in the afternoon and going through the night. I drove up to Bourbon`s Town and Country Market to get some ice cream and as I was leaving and preparing to drive back to Sullivan, I spotted a Leasburg Fire Department tanker and Bourbon Fire Department Rescue Truck coming up behind me, responding to what I figured was a structure fire on Hwy N south…they stopped behind me, held up by a westbound train, and once the train cleared, I was able to move over for them at Hwy JJ, then followed them south on Hwy N…half a mile south of the Salvation Army Camp, they came to a stop at a driveway on the left side, where they were backing up to dump their water loads into a drop tank set up in the northbound lane of Hwy N. I backed up to a pull off spot a quarter mile back up the highway, secured my truck, grabbed my camera and walked back down to the driveway….I stopped and talked to one of the Bourbon Firefighters who drove the Rescue truck out there for a few seconds, then hiked on down the highway to the water supply staging area….
…Cuba`s tanker was backed up dropping it`s water load and Leasburg`s tanker would be next to dump their load…
…..I figured the tankers were returning to Bourbon to fill off a hydrant and then return in shuttle to the drop tank…Sullivan Pumper 854 was drafting water from the drop tank and would then pump water up the hill of the driveway to the Bourbon Pumpers near the top of the hill where the house was on fire…I could see a heavy fire glow through the wooded area enough and heard a lot of popping and crackling, to know it was fully involved….as I hiked up the steep gravel driveway, I soon could see it was very much heavily involved in fire….
…it appeared to be a two story residence with a deck around two or three sides on the south side of the house and a two car garage on the north side, much of the fire was at the lower and upper level on the south side, while the north side was mainly heavy black smoke…I hoped no one was inside the house…I shot this video as soon as I climbed up that steep hillside, hence the reason I sound out of breath on the video….
Afterward, I stopped and talked to a couple of ladies, turned out to be their residence, Parkans their name, and the younger lady told me that they thought it started in the basement, they smelled smoke and her husband went downstairs to check…..found the basement in flames…they evacuated the house then and called the fire department. Even worse than standing there watching your home burn like that, was the fact that firefighters down the hill were having problems pumping water from the drop tank up to Bourbon`s pumpers…no water pumped to the trucks at the fire meant no water in the handlines for firefighters to attack the fire…there is nothing worse than that helpless feeling when you are faced with equipment failure like that. Luckily tho, there were good people down there trying to figure it out and get it working…there was a driveway around the front of the house, so I walked around it to take some photos and video on that side…
The heavy black smoke on the north end indicated the fire was advancing from south to north so at this point three fourths of the residence was heavily involved in fire….
…and a few seconds later, the fire lit up the roof of the garage as well….
…traveling across the peak of the garage roof to exit out the north end at the roof peak in a ball of fire….
I then moved over to the driveway that runs along the north end of the house, up above the garage to get another angle on the fire…
After talking briefly to Captain Damon who was assisting the Bourbon Pump Operator, as they waited for water from Sullivan Pumper 854 at the drop tank below, I moved back over to the front side of the house to shoot a few more videos of the home that was now fully involvd from north end to south end and burning ferociously….
Then all of a sudden, I saw Sullivan firefighters packing up in the driveway, a good sign that the water supply was on it`s way up the hill to the Bourbon pumper and soon the handlines would be pressurized and ready to mann….
About three fourths of the way through the video above, you can hear an explosion, sounded like a civil war cannon going off and a ball of fire blew out the north end of the garage as well…I still don`t know what it was that exploded. Below, firefighters from Sullivan and Bourbon approach the handlines and prepare to mount a defensive attack on the structure….
…and pretty soon, firefighters were putting water on the flames….
…they decided to move over and start on the north end of the house at the garage first and then work their way back to the south end…
Pretty soon they had the fire in the garage knocked down and were making good progress down the line toward the south end of the house….I was on the phone talking to Jim Bartle when I shot this next video, he was snowplowing over in the Cuba and Owensville areas…incidentally, Beaufort-Leslie and Owensville Fire Districts sent Tankers to this fire as well….
Within a few minutes, flames were completely knocked down on the south end and firefighters could now take a break, before beginning the long task of mopping up hot spots before leaving the scene….
Please pray for this family in the coming weeks, as it`s very likely that they lost nearly everything they own.