LENOX TOWNSHIP — Fire ripped through a two-story home at 3525 Route 46 South Saturday morning killing a cat and a dog before burning the house and its contents to the ground, said Jefferson Fire Chief John Wayman.
“The house was fully involved,” Wayman said of the home owned by Todd Newhart when firefighters arrived on the scene late Saturday morning
He said the home was burning so intensely firefighters couldn’t do anything to save the building but moved into defensive positions to save a barn and a neighbor’s storage shed, Wayman said.
Wayman said the fire spread extremely quickly. He said it was an open floor plan and it went from one side to the other in a very, short period of time.
The fire call was made around 11:20 a.m. Wayman said Newhart had gone to an area feed mill and when he returned home found smoke coming from his house when he opened his front door, Wayman said. Newhart removed two vehicles from the burning structure as his wife called 911. The car and truck were damaged by fire.
“We lost a dog and a cat,” Wayman said.
Wayman said 16 firefighters from the Jefferson Fire Department were on the scene for much of the afternoon and reinforcements from Rome and Morgan Hose fire departments provided mutual aide.
“It’s a local family so I imagine they will be with relatives,” Wayman said. He said the Ashtabula County chapter of the American Red Cross was not involved.
Firefighters were on the scene for almost five hours in frigid temperatures. He said a total of at least 30 firefighters fought the blaze and worked on cleanup operations with three units from Jefferson and two each from Rome and Morgan making the call.
Wayman said 3,000 gallon tankers from the mutual aid companies helped maintain water supply. He said the cold weather did make it difficult for firefighters, but nobody was injured.
Short trips to the truck helped firefighters from getting too cold during the fire, Wayman said. “If you get cold you come up around the engine,” he said of ways to keep warm fighting the fire.
Wayman said that when the engines pulled back into the station around 4:30 p.m. they looked like icicles hanging from the side of a house.
One lane remained open on Route 45 throughout the fire and clean-up operations, Wayman said. He said the cause and origin will be hard to determine because of the extent of the fire.
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