A 200-year-old barn burned down in Greenfield early Sunday morning.
Firefighters responded to the first alarm fire at 3:07 a.m. Sunday at 65 Holden Road in Greenfield.
The Greenfield Fire Department arrived to find a 36-by-50-foot barn fully involved in flames.
“It was big barn. It was incredibly on fire when I got there. It was just a mountain of orange,” Greenfield Fire Chief David Hall said Monday morning. “This thing was producing unbelievable heat. I saw it half a mile.”
Hall said when he arrived he found the roof and siding had completely burned away and only the post and beam structure remained.
“The barn was engulfed in orange flames that rose some fifty feet in the air,” Hall said in a press release Monday morning.
Holden Road is a narrow gravel road, close to the Lyndeborough town line, with only has four or five houses on it.
Upon arrival, firefighters raised the call to a second alarm, bringing out Lyndeborough, Francestown, Bennington, Antrim, Hancock and Peterborough fire departments to assist with manpower and equipment.
Hall said the tenant living in the farmhouse about 50 feet from the barn called in the fire. He said the barn was used for storage and it was not being used to house animals.
“It’s a big barn and it was full of stuff. It was a storage barn, so there was an enormous fuel load,” Hall said. “Typical stuff, but there was also apparently antiques, furniture, there were all kinds of things. It was a tremendous barn.”
The barn could not be saved, but they were able to save several outbuildings and stop several brush fires, Hall said.
“The house, several outbuildings, and a camping trailer were at risk… one of the outbuildings was already on fire. There were several small brush fires that had started as well,” Hall said. “Everything was on fire. It was insane. There were brush fires starting. … We protected everything.”
Firefighters first worked to contain the fire and protect the exposed buildings and extinguish the brush fires. After that a water supply from a nearby brook was established via a fire hose. Using the hose and an engine ladder, firefighters attacked the barn from above. Two hours, and 40,000 gallons of water later, firefighters had fully extinguished the remains of the barn.
“It was a tremendous amount of water,” Hall said.
The barn was a total loss, but all the other buildings were protected and no one was injured, Hall said.
Hall said the cause of the fire remains undetermined, but said there is nothing suspicious about it.
“There was electricity in there, so that’s always an issue,” Hall said. “I have a country house, on a country road, and if you don’t have mice, I don’t know how you do it. Mice cause fires, they chew on wires.”
Hall said while the farmhouse was built in 1860, he was told the barn was built in 1776. If that’s true it could have been the oldest barn in Greenfield, he said.