Fire destroys barn in Clifton; embers ignite fields

CLIFTON – Neighbors along Route 9 joined firefighters in extinguishing a fire that destroyed a storage barn and spread when winds carried embers to nearby fields and lawns.

The heat from the fire also melted some of the vinyl siding on a nearby home, located about 11/2 miles east of the intersection of Routes 9 and 180. Firefighters from Eddington, Holden, Brewer and Dedham put out the flames before they could do more damage.

A few charred beams were all that was left standing of a barn estimated to be 30 feet by 50 feet that a neighbor said had been used for storage.

The fire is believed to have started in the grass and spread into the barn, said Alan Boynton, deputy fire chief in Eddington. About eight firefighters already were at the fire station in preparation for training when the fire call came in at 5:12 p.m. Even with this fortune, the fire already had engulfed the barn before firefighters arrived.

“The barn was essentially gone before we got there,” Boynton said.

The firefighters turned to preventing the fire from spreading to the house.

Steve Wong, 51, lives several houses down on the opposite side of Route 9 and was home watching television when his children said they smelled smoke. Suspecting a grass fire was the cause, Wong peered out a window.

“When I looked out, I realized it wasn’t a grass fire – the smoke was black,” Wong said. From upstairs, Wong’s son Stephen, 15, could see the flames of the fast-moving fire so they all headed outside.

Sirens from Eddington fire engines could be heard in the distance, about six miles away. Closer to them, Wong could hear small explosions coming from inside the burning barn. The explosions were not the forceful kind such as gasoline or dynamite might generate, but noticeable nonetheless.

“It wasn’t dynamite, but you knew it was out of the ordinary,” Wong said. Meanwhile, the fire spread across Route 9, aided by the wind. Boynton estimated that embers were carried 500 to 750 feet away and began burning where they landed.

About 10 teen-agers sought to put out these new fires, and Stephen Wong was one of them. He approached one spot, larger than a tire, and began stomping it out with his feet. He was able to extinguish about half of it, but found the fire was spreading faster than he was putting it out. Someone brought an all-terrain vehicle carrying a container of water and Wong took his shirt off, dunked it into the water and started beating the flames until they were finally out.

The senior Wong and other neighbors headed a short distance east of the fire, flagging down tractor-trailer trucks, trying to slow them down as they approached the scene where fire engines and tankers were lined up alongside the road. With the closest fire hydrant three miles away by the R. Leon Williams Lumber Co., fire departments had to shuttle water to the scene when they ran dry, which happened frequently.