An 86-year-old Somerville woman perished Oct. 16 in a fire that destroyed her home. Firefighters from five towns responded to the scene, but officials said the damage to the home was so extensive the exact cause of the fire may never be known.
A neighbor reported the fire at around 7:30 p.m., and Somerville firefighters were on scene within minutes, said Fire Chief Mike Dostie, who lives near the home and was one of the first to arrive.
Dostie found Pauline Danley’s lakefront home at 152 Frye Rd. engulfed in flames when they arrived. Rescuers attempted to enter the house through the back, but the heat drove them out.
“We didn’t make it more than 10 feet inside,” Dostie said. “It was like an oven in there.”
The house had a metal roof, which Dostie said contributed to the heat being trapped inside the building. The heat was so intense that it melted a metal grill on Danley’s back porch.
Danley lived alone, and there was no one else in the house at the time of the fire. Rescuers found her body in a second-floor bedroom, where the fire is believed to have started, Dostie said.
Frye Rd. is about a mile long and has 44 homes, but despite the close quarters none of the surrounding homes were damaged in the fire, thanks to a steady supply of water from hydrants on the road installed about two years ago, Dostie said.
Crews from Somerville, Jefferson, Whitefield, Windsor and Washington responded to the scene. “Lincoln [County Communications] deserves a lot for credit for getting calls out to all the departments quickly and paging everybody at the same time,” Dostie said.
The fire was extinguished in just over an hour. The top floor was completely destroyed, and there was extensive damage to the ground floor, Dostie said.
One of Danley’s neighbors told responders he talked to her about 20 minutes before the fire was reported, which means the fire ignited and spread to most of the building in less than half an hour, Dostie said.
The metal roof may have been responsible for how fast fire consumed the home, Dostie said.