Fire destroys dairy barn, house in Bradford

BRADFORD – Fire destroyed a large dairy barn Thursday night and spread to a 19th century farm house, leaving nine family members living in two apartments homeless.

“It’s all gone,” said Scott Ouellette, who lived in the first floor apartment of what is known as the Hurd Farm. He watched from across Route 11 as firefighters sprayed lines of water and carved holes in the side of the house to extinguish the fire and salvage as much of the farmhouse as they could.

No firefighters or residents were injured. About 60 animals, nearly all of them dairy cows and calves, but including one pig and two cats that were housed in the two buildings, were apparently unharmed.

Behind the house in what had been a massive dairy barn, unabated fire burned the wooden remains. Firefighters created a firewall to keep the flames from spreading to the home.

“They stopped it in its tracks,” Bill Grant, deputy chief of the Hudson Fire Department, said at the scene. Hudson was one of about a half dozen fire departments that brought firefighters and equipment to combat the fire.

Still, the fire eventually spread to the house. Shortly before 9 p.m., horns and alarms on the firetrucks sounded, alerting firefighters to an “all out” situation requiring them to be out of the house. Fire had reached the walls and floors, Grant said. Within 10 minutes, fire was reported to have spread to the basement.

Ouellette had been inside the home earlier that evening when a friend pulled into the driveway and yelled to him that the barn was on fire.

Ouellette said he initially thought it was a joke, but reality set in quickly when he saw the smoke coming from the corner of the barn near the milking equipment.

He, along with brother Christopher Ouellette, 21, and friend Jeremy Wheaton, 29, tried to put out the fire with hoses and buckets of water. But the fire fueled by hay spread fast through the old barn.

“It was too far gone. We couldn’t stop it,” said Scott Ouellette, who lived on the first floor with his fiancee, three children ages 3 months to 5 years old, a brother and a friend. His mother, Rose Ouellette, and his brother, RolandJames, 17, lived upstairs.

Harold Peters, 52, works at the dairy farm and earlier had finished milking 56 cows and turned them out to the upper field. Two calves and a pig remained inside the barn, but were later taken out. Peters left with other family members to go to the store about 7 p.m. and came back about a half-hour later to find the barn on fire. No cause was immediately determined.

The home and barn had sentimental value as well as being a home. Tracie Peters, 20, Ouellette’s fiancee, had lived there since she was 8 years old and her father has worked on the farm for most of his life.

The farm was insured, according to people on the scene. When asked what would happen next, Harold Peters wasn’t ready to speculate.

“We’ll worry about that tomorrow,” he said. “We can’t think about anything. We’ll worry about that tomorrow.”

Rose Ouellette said friends stepped forward to offer them a place to stay. Despite losing everything, their clothing and personal things, family members tried to stay positive and remember that they still had their family.

“We’ve got our lives, that’s a plus,” she said.