Burning Down the House
Great moments in building history: All is buried, and the landscape changes forever
Our 175-year-old house burned to the ground recently. The old farmhouse had been so badly built and knocked about through the years, it didn’t owe anybody anything. That’s why we cannibalized it and gave the near-skeletal remains to Barnstead Fire-Rescue to demolish for training purposes. They’d spare us the expensive mess of dismantling a house, sorting its component parts ecologically and trekking them to dumps all over New Hampshire. We looked forward to a clean site for the retirement home my architect-husband had drawn.
Firefighters came a day or two before the burn to knock over the chimneys for safety, to remove a window for venting and to stockpile interior cardboard and wood to ensure a hot fire. At their request, we in turn had discontinued our insurance, signed a statement that there were no liens on the property and turned title of the building over to them for the day. The first match, and we’d be on our way to building.
Still, we wanted a quiet moment to say goodbye on that summer morning. But when we came around the bend at 6:45 a.m. for the last rites, we were blown away by three pumpers, two ambulances, a number of official vehicles parked all about and no less than 30 volunteer firefighters. They had taken possession of a quarter mile of country road and were at work already. Two 100-ft. fountains of water arched out from the mighty vehicles into the private pond that abuts both the house and the road, while women wearing official T-shirts had set up portable tables for doughnuts, potato chips and tubs of cold Gatorade, Mountain Dew and water. Countless yards of hose entangled our feet. Walkie-talkies squawked, their unfamiliar noises terrorizing the gray goose and sending her flying across the pond for safety. Condemned to be useless observers, Bob and I were relegated to the brambles and poison ivy across the road from the doomed cottage.
Our local crew had been joined by firefighters from four nearby towns. All shapes, ages and sizes, these men had convened for a full-dress rehearsal of their big act. They scurried about in full regalia, preparing for the fun of having a house to burn. We had seen many a mortgage burned, but never a house. What an awesome experience! The destruction of a real, stick-built structure that every instinct dictates be saved is stressful, no matter how justified it seems to be.
The incendiary torture of what had once been a home took over six hours. Rookies paired with senior men set a fire in an upstairs bedroom closet, a cul-de-sac that would retain heat and be hard to find in a smoke-filled building. Within moments, flames leaped from the windows, which buckled and spewed broken glass onto the lawn. This mini-fire was no sooner controlled than restarted repeatedly, so that those participating in the drill could enter a burning house several times. Next the living room was set ablaze, then the kitchen and bedrooms, as smoke and flames gnawed away at the roof. The heat intensified unbearably, yet outlines of men within could be seen against the flames. One overweight chap, temporarily felled by the heat, was carted off to a waiting gurney.
Vehicular traffic began to rubberneck past. One driver, spotting the flames from the second floor, lowered his window and coolly asked, “Barbecue?” “No,” replied Bob, without turning a hair, “this is a controlled burn. Would you like us to come and do your house next week?”
Then suddenly, just as a mosquito got me on the neck, a new green fire engine belched thrice. “Playtime’s over,” explained one young man, reading my startled look. “That siren means the house is no longer safe. Every man must get out before the roof caves in.” As if on command, we gawkers took one giant step back. Accelerants were introduced through the windows to put the house out of its misery. Exhausted, sweating, red faced and dehydrated, the men removed their gear and paused to view their handiwork. “Fire is the great mystery, isn’t it?” asked one youth, hunkered down beside me. “I’m afraid of it,” I confessed. “So am I,” he replied. “We all are. We’d better be.”
“The excitement comes when the whole house goes,” said one of the uniformed men on the hill behind us. Almost everyone sank into reverie as the writhing house was permitted to perish. The only ones who stayed busy were our fire chief, monitoring the performance of his crew, and the ladies pouring fluids. Our capable firemen had protected phone lines, the electric pole with its newly transferred hook-up, the garage, even nearby bushes with sprays of water aimed with the precision of lasers. They were able to maintain the exterior walls of 230 Beauty Hill Road to contain the blaze until the very end. At that time, our excavator, who had been on standby, raised his huge bucket in final salute and pressed the walls of the house back into the blazing pit. In short order, the remains were washed down for an hour to prevent any sparks from bringing the fire back from the dead.
The firefighters were grateful for the experience. “We need to keep up our skills,” they assured us. “And it’s not often we get a whole house to burn.” We, in turn, thanked them for reminding us what selfless courage is all about. Silence now prevailed.
The next morning, we looked down into a sea of twisted metal, broken bricks from the fireplace and the scorched remnants of a cast-iron tub. The view of the water and hilly pine forests beyond rose up ahead of us with a beauty we could only imagine before. It would soon be seen from every window on every wall of the new dwelling. Within hours, the flat foundation stones had been salvaged to become a New England stone wall. The cellar hole disappeared under loads of fill, and the monster excavator compacted until only a flat plain remained. It is an awesome thing when a house forever ceases to be a home. All is buried, and the landscape changes forever.
—Naomi Bluestone, Center Barnstead, New Hampshire
Drawing by: Jackie Rogers
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