NORWAY — A Pikes Hill Road family of four was left homeless early Saturday morning when fire destroyed their more-than-100-year-old wooden house, Norway fire Chief Dennis Yates said.

Christopher M. Buckley, his wife and their two children are being helped by the American Red Cross, which has housed them in an area motel for the time being, Yates said.

The children weren’t home at the time, but Buckley and his wife and the family pets got out safely while the building burned.

A few firefighters suffered minor injuries, but didn’t require hospitalization, Yates said.

Firefighters from Norway, Paris, Oxford, West Paris, Poland, Hebron, Waterford, Harrison and Mechanic Falls, and PACE ambulance responded to the call for help at 157 Pikes Hill Road.

“We got the call at about 12:30 this morning and when we arrived, the place was fully engulfed with flames,” said Yates, who had firefighters begin an exterior attack.

“There was no way that anybody could have gone in and saved anything anyway.”

He said there was nothing suspicious about the fire and the family didn’t have any insurance on the home.

“The only problem was at the very beginning where the fire had burned the electrical service off the side of the house and it went across the road, and Central Maine Power came and alleviated that problem for us,” Yates said.

At one point, after checking with the State Fire Marshal’s Office, firefighters had to bring in an excavator to reach the fire because the gutted building collapsed on itself, he said.

“They said do what you need to do to get it out,” Yates said.

He said they didn’t have any idea where the fire began, but he believes it was upstairs.

“They said they had been having some electrical problems with breakers tripping, so that’s why we assume it was electrical, but we can’t really determine that’s what caused it, so it’s going to go as an undetermined cause for now,” Yates said.

He said the Buckleys were lucky to escape uninjured, because there weren’t any working fire alarms or smoke detectors in the home of which he was aware.

“So, they were very fortunate to get out,” Yates said.

“They had just gone to bed, I guess, and then the dogs were acting funny and pacing around and that kind of alerted them, and then they heard this noise and realized the house was on fire.”

“Fortunately, the two children who should have been upstairs asleep were at the brother’s house,” he said. “So, they were fortunate all the way around.”

Yates said they cleared the scene by 3:30 a.m. and the road, which was closed by the Oxford Fire Police, was reopened to traffic.

tkarkos@sunjournal.com

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