Fire destroys Hodgdon barn Vehicles, tools lost to flames, but crews save family’s home

HODGDON – Despite gusty winds, firefighters from two towns saved a house on Ingraham Road, even though a barn 15 feet away containing snowmobiles, an all-terrain vehicle and tools was engulfed in flames.

The fire in the 21/2-story barn belonging to Billy Joe and Leisa Hall was discovered by their sons Friday afternoon.

Matthew Hall, 15, said he had just finished talking on the telephone and had walked to the back door to look outside.

“All I saw was smoke all over here,” he said, looking out over the dooryard Friday afternoon as firefighters finished up their work.

At almost the same time Matthew saw the smoke, his younger brother, Kyle, came running up and told Matthew that the barn was on fire.

“I turned on the hose and tried to spray it,” Matthew said. With no success from that, he ran back into the house and called his mother, a dispatcher for Maine State Police Troop F in Houlton, who was working at the time.

“My kids were just hysterical,” Leisa Hall recalled as she stood with Matthew on Friday. “I told them to go stand by that big tree over there,” she said, pointing to a large tree near the road that was well away from the fire.

Hall called the Fire Department at 12:53 p.m. and then was brought to the fire by one of the troopers at Troop F. She said she could see the heavy, black smoke as they drove through Houlton, more than seven miles away.

Paul Stewart, the safety officer for the Hodgdon Fire Department, who lives about 300 feet from the Halls, said he had just gone to get something to eat when he saw a lot of black smoke blowing through his yard.

Stewart said it appeared to him that the fire began at the right rear corner of the barn and, pushed by the wind, moved quickly to engulf the 40-by-50-foot structure.

Two pumpers and a tanker from Hodgdon responded to the fire call as did a pumper and tanker from the Linneus Fire Department.

Firefighters used the Halls’ swimming pool as a water supply. Tank trucks were filled at the dam on the South Branch of the Meduxnekeag River about a half-mile away.

Firefighters were able to keep the fire from spreading to the Halls’ house and attached garage on the east side of the barn, but radiant heat from the flames melted some vinyl siding on the house.

A small garage with a car in it on the south side of the barn did catch fire. Firefighters knocked down most of the fire and then pushed the car out and away from the flames.

A Nissan Pathfinder next to the barn was a total loss, as was a three-wheel all-terrain vehicle and a canoe. Four snowmobiles in the barn and between $8,000 and $10,000 worth of tools also were lost, according to Leisa Hall.

She said there was insurance on all of the destroyed items, but she wasn’t sure if there was any on the barm itself.