Two Dublin residents were displaced from their home after a two-alarm fire on Doe Road in the early hours of Thursday morning.
The fire appears to have sparked in the bathroom of the home just after midnight, according to Dublin Fire Chief Tom Vanderbilt.
“The home was occupied at the time, but they did have working smoke detectors,” Vanderbilt said. “This is a learning opportunity – working smoke detectors could save your life.”
The two adult occupants, who are renters of the single-family home, exited the house and called 911. In a stroke of luck, Vanderbilt said, one of the members of his fire department is a close neighbor, arrived on the scene within minutes, determined it was an active structure fire and activated a second alarm.
“The fire was not fully involved, but there was heavy smoke throughout the structure, and it was starting to come through the roof,” Vanderbilt said.
The firefighter neighbor took a garden hose and started to wet down the outside of the home in the area of the bathroom, to try to keep the fire contained until tankers arrived.
Vanderbilt said after investigation of the bathroom by the town building inspector and representatives of the fire marshal’s office, the cause is still unknown, but the fire is not considered suspicious.
The fire damage was contained mostly to the bathroom area of the house, Vanderbilt said, but there is significant water and smoke damage and damage from firefighters venting the smoke, and the utilities were shut off, Vanderbilt said.
“They’ll make it whole again. You can’t replace a life, so hopefully they realize that this may be a bad day, but they did everything right,” Vanderbilt said. “The first thing they did was they called 911 and got us started. That’s what you need to do when you have a fire that could be doubling in size every minute. Any day you have a second-alarm fire and no injuries is as good a day as you’re going to make it.”
Jaffrey, Peterborough, Hancock, Harrisville, Marlborough, and Keene assisted on the scene.
Ashley Saari can be reached at 924-7172 ext. 244 or asaari@ledgertranscript.com. She’s on Twitter @AshleySaariMLT.