Woodstock family loses home to morning fire
WOODSTOCK – A family of four was left homeless Thursday when a fire tore through their rural home.
Jeff Campbell, 44, said the day began no different for him and his wife, Deborah, 41, of 311 Curtis Hill Road.
They both work nights and got up early to get the kids, James, 16, and Josh, 14, off to school.
After the boys left, Campbell stoked the wood stove and went back to bed.
“I heard a pop like I have never heard before; opened the bedroom door and the whole wall behind the stove was burning,” Campbell said.
He ran for the fire extinguisher in the garage.
It didn’t work.
“It was too late by then anyway,” Campbell said. “My wife called the Fire Department and told me to get dressed.”
The couple got their two puppies and several cats out of the house.
“I wanted to go back in,” Campbell said. “But what do you do? What do you grab?
“It was too smoky. I started feeling it here,” he said holding his throat. “I didn’t know what to get.”
Firefighters from Woodstock, Greenwood, West Paris, Paris and Norway arrived at the scene as well as Tri Town Ambulance.
But it was a hopeless battle. The fire flourished in the eaves and ate its way through the home.
After six and one-half hours they were only able to save a few personal possessions and a couple pieces of furniture, according to Greenwood Fire Chief Raymond Seames, the scene commander.
They used water from their trucks and tankers on hand but had to send other tankers three miles south to Trapp Corner to fill from a hydrant there.
There was no closer water.
Seames said firefighters had it knocked down within minutes of their arrival, but the real fight was in the eaves.
“There was a roof built over a trailer roof and there were multiple routes of steel, multiple routes for the fire to travel,” Seames said. “We really are having to dig to get at the right angles. The original metal roof from the trailer just trapped the heat. We ended up removing most of the roof.”
“It was a devastating loss,” Seames said.
The Campbells had no fire insurance.
Jeff said he and his wife had talked about it, but learned that insurance companies don’t like to provide coverage on structures like their house.
“I can see why they don’t like to do it,” Campbell said. “It’s like a fire trap.”
He said he knew once the fire was in the eaves, the house would not last.
“We built it ourselves,” he said about his home of 18 years. “We started with an old trailer and then built this way, and then that way. When you raise four kids in a place there’s a lot of things stored up there (in the eaves).”
The Campbell’s two oldest boys, Jeff Jr. and Jonathan, both live in their own homes on Curtis Hill Road.
He said they planned to stay with one of their sons until he could figure out what to do.
“It wasn’t really a castle. It was home,” Campbell said. “I hate to start over again, but I have to.”
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