A second-alarm fire gutted the interior of a two-story home in New Ipswich on Monday afternoon, fire officials said.
“The house is pretty much totally destroyed,” Deputy Chief Gary Somero said on scene at 117 Poor Farm Road. “The inside is really in bad shape. The whole attic area is gone. Part of the first floor is collapsed, and part of the second floor is burned away.”
Fire Chief Meredith Lund said on scene that when the first firefighters arrived on the scene, they could see fire breaking through the eaves and the roof of one side of the wood-frame building. The owner and sole occupant of the house had already exited on his own when fire crews arrived and was not injured, Lund said.
The homeowner was upstairs and smelled smoke, exiting the house. The fire was called in by passersby, Lund said.
Fire officials hadn’t yet determined the cause of the fire, or its starting point, while still on the scene.
Somero noted that the house uses a wood stove, but it was not burning wood at the time of the fire. The cause may be electrical, he said, but investigation into the cause was only in the initial phases, and he couldn’t definitively state how the fire began.
“We’re trying to determine that, now,” Somero said.
Lund said the New Ipswich Fire Department was assisted on scene by Greenville, Peterborough, Jaffrey and Ashby, and noted that there if there was any benefit to the current COVID-19 crisis, it was that the department was able to have two fully-staffed ladder trucks on scene almost immediately – something that small volunteer departments struggle with during weekday calls during daylight hours.
“That’s a good thing about all this, if there can be such a thing,” she said.
Ashley Saari can be reached at 924-7172 ext. 244 or asaari@ledgertranscript.com. She’s on Twitter @AshleySaariMLT.