PERU – An early morning fire of suspicious origin destroyed an old vacant two-story farmhouse Friday on Dickvale Road.
Fire Chief Bill Hussey said late Friday morning that it was the home of Dwayne and Millie Childs at 717 Dickvale Road, but no one had lived there since last September.
“Right now, the cause is undetermined, but we are considering it suspicious,” Hussey said. “There was power to the building, but everything was shut off inside.”
State Fire Marshal’s Office senior investigators Rick Shepard and Dan Roy, and Sgt. Joel Davis examined what was left of the structure late Friday morning.
Hussey and a few Peru firefighters waited for an OK from the trio before using a backhoe and fire hose to go after hot spots under flooring.
Hussey said the fire began shortly before 3:50 a.m.
Two neighbors, Harold Hebert and John Witherell, discovered it simultaneously and called 911.
Peru firefighter Rick Vaughn, who lives across the street, was the third caller.
“I rolled over in bed and looked at the clock, and then at the window, which had a glow, and I thought it was daylight, and that I’d overslept. Then I looked out and saw the fire,” Vaughn said.
He said the back right corner of the house “was fully engulfed, but I just had to wait for the firefighters to get here.”
“Flames were shooting 20 to 30 feet in the air. The backside of the house was all tar shingles, so it was real flammable. There was big black smoke, and everything was just going straight up, which was a good thing, because it kept it more contained,” Vaughn said.
Hussey said he saw the flames from his house three miles away.
“It lit up like you wouldn’t believe,” said Vaughn’s mother, Hazel, who lives next door to her son, and was born and raised in the 1850s house that burned.
Forty-five firefighters and five firetrucks from Peru, Dixfield and Rumford were used to fight the fire. Water had to be carried in tankers filled by a portable pump in Spears Stream down the street.
Due to the intense radiant heat that scorched nearby trees and bushes and forced neighbors to hose their roofs, firefighters could attack the fire only from the outside. A two-car garage near the house was saved.
“The fire was pretty stubborn inside, that’s why we had to put so many holes in the building. We were trying to get to it,” Peru Assistant Chief Timothy Holland said.
“It took us almost an hour to knock it down, and nearly three hours to get it under control,” he added.
There were no injuries.
With sad eyes, Hazel Vaughn watched firefighters knock down a wall to get at hot spots. She and two sisters and eight brothers were born to Elmer and Iva Childs in the farmstead.
“I’m very, very sad. I have a lot of memories from there. It was an old, old, old house, but they tried, Peru, Dixfield and Rumford, they tried,” she said of efforts to save the house.
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