An Empty Building Comes to Life

I wrote this as an assignment from a prompt for a writers group run by Sara Tucker https://www.korongobooks.com/

An Empty Building Comes to Life

February 25, 2024, 462 Ridge Road, Randolph Center, Vermont

Smoke was oozing out of cracks in the house.  I wasn’t surprised.  I knew the firefighters would have started training first thing in the morning and it was already 10 a.m. when I pulled into the driveway of the Ridge Road house.  Poof, a giant cloud of smoke obscured the front of the house and traveled across the road towards the farm fields below. 

Soon, very orange flames were flowing out of downstairs windows (but flowing out and upward, defying gravity).  Orange flames started emerging from a gap where the two houses are joined together on the south side.  I don’t think I have ever seen anything that orange.  More orange than a pumpkin.  More orange than the most orange fall leaves.  Oh!  I know!  It was as orange as those close-up pictures I’ve seen of the sun spewing up solar flares.  I hadn’t expected this much fire until about noon.  But I’ve never been to a controlled burn of a house before, so how would I really know what to expect?! 

Suddenly there was an eerie sounding alarm…almost like a fog horn at an ocean lighthouse.  I somehow knew this meant “everybody out!” 

As I passed Chief Williams, he said, “the fire got away from us a little faster than we’d hoped.”  But it’s a house with wood over 200 years old.  Dry, thin, friable, lighting up like dry twigs in a campfire.  They would have liked to have conducted even more inside training (they’d already done 3 hours), but safety is their top priority.  Everybody out.

You might expect all of the pumper trucks with hoses on all sides of the house would spring to life, shooting out gallons of water at the house in giant arcs.  Many firefighters were surrounding the house.  Helmets on, labels on the back of khaki coats RCFD (Randolph Center) or BROOKFIELD, or black coats with ERFD (East Randolph), or finally, some red/some black coats reading RVFD (Randolph Village).  But no, this was not a firefighting situation.  This was just a let-it-burn-but keep-the-fire-under-control situation.  In fact, the chief wanted it to burn hot, the hotter the fire, the less smoke is produced.  And it was hot.  The February day was 19 degrees with snow on the ground but you could feel the heat all the way across Ridge Road almost 100’ away. 

There were some streams of water, firefighters aiming hoses up at trees near the house, helping the old Maples make it through this.  We’ll know if they leaf out in the spring. 

As I watched and took photos, I could start to see the insides of rooms I had gotten to know so well in the months before the event.  It was surreal to see these intense orange flames now filling the house and shooting out of windows.  Rooms where I could imagine the contents, the sunshine coming through windows while standing inside, looking out at the view.  It was especially weird to shoot videos and zoom in on the house…almost like traveling into the fire and into the rooms with flames.  You could start to see the structure of beams and supporting rafters. 

The main house was now all lit up, the roof a general mass of orange flames, with the upstairs windows seeming to direct flames out of the openings. 

The 2nd house, the saltbox house with the fireplace room and its two upstairs bedrooms, caught last but when it did, it became an even bigger conflagration than the main house. 

I could see right through the main house to the other side- from south bedrooms to north bedrooms which were once separated by cozy walls.  From time to time a section of the house would collapse with a beam left over, tilting at a strange angle.  Like snapping photos at a basketball game I’d “awwww” when my bad timing missed catching an especially dramatic event. 

It didn’t take long, after being there a little more than a couple hours, only the barest of frames of the bottom floor was standing, charred gray and black corners posts that had been huge beams back in 1790.  Most of the leftover fire was in the cellar hole.  The excavator driver started working on pushing everything into the hole.  Firefighters helped him by dousing his shovel with water to protect the electrical connections. 

Was I sad?  Yes, a little.  But this didn’t seem real, despite all the planning and reading and imagining.  It was like watching a movie; yes, it was really hot, but you wouldn’t get hurt.  One firefighter smiled at me as I took his photo so he could send it to his mom.  People were casually standing around, starting to eat burgers that one of the younger volunteers was cooking on a gas grill. 

And when I think of the house, it is still there.