BETHEL — A short circuit in a refrigerator damaged a home at Farwell Mountain Estates on Wednesday afternoon, fire officials said.
Friends of owner Eva Nira Bitencourt of Ipswich, Mass., who were staying at the house for the week, fought the fire by squirting small plastic bottles of Poland Spring water on flames until firefighters arrived, Bethel police officer George Gould said.
“They kept it contained with those bottles until firefighters got here,” Gould said. He brought an extinguisher from his cruiser to help. “The only time he slowed down was when I told him he was dumping it on electrical wires, and he said he didn’t even think of that.”
No one was injured, Bethel fire Capt. Shannon Sumner said. Damage was contained to a 5- by 7-foot section of wall, flooring and the deck railing.
Sumner declined to estimate the damage, saying that because he isn’t a carpenter, he wouldn’t know.
“It looks like the refrigerator shorted out and got that wall going and it did quite a lot of damage to the wall and rail,” Sumner said.
“And the bottom burned right out of a board below it, so they’ll probably have to redo the wall from the window over.”
Sumner said adults with the three families did the right thing when they shut off the electrical power.
“The thing to do was to cut the power and they definitely did the right thing,” he said.
Gould was the first to arrive at the house at 27 First St., which is off Intervale and Swan Hill Roads. It is nearly six miles east of the fire station.
“When I got here, flames were well over 2 feet high and coming out the side of the house and the railing attached to the side of the house was engulfed,” Gould said.
Firefighters arrived right behind Gould and extinguished the flames, then cut the wall apart with a chainsaw to get at hot spots.
“That’s a good thing they had bottled water,” Sumner said, because when they cut the power, it also prevented them from using pump water from an outside faucet.
“The railing was the first thing we hit and then we knocked it down, he said. “What they hadn’t put out had gone out anyways, because the insulation helps smother the fire.”
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