BLACKSTONE, Mass. — The holiday season doesn’t officially begin until Thursday, but Susan Turcotte was feeling the spirit a little early. She was one of several Blackstone residents donating to a local family displaced by a fire.
“It’s a family with four children,” Turcotte said. “I put myself in their position and I would appreciate any help if I were them.”
And they do appreciate it. Homeowner Ryan Watson tells Boston 25 News he had no intention of doing a TV interview, one day after losing his home. But he wanted to publicly thank the town and especially his neighbors for all their help.
“I was more than surprised,” he said. “I started tearing up.”
Watson shared the house with his fiancé, Kayla, and four small children, ranging in age from 10 months to 7 years. The entire family was home when the fire started around 7 p.m. — and quickly evacuated
The Blackstone Fire Department responded to 65 Rayner Street a short time later — and found an unspectacular scene. Deputy Chief Kevin Roy suggested this was an insidious fire — with flames that were mostly hidden.
“We knew it was significant due to the amount of smoke coming from the various areas of the house,” Roy said.
Investigators believe the fire likely started with embers escaping from an undetected breach in the family’s wood stove flue — the pipe that exhausts gases from the burning wood. That likely ignited studs in the wall behind the stove. And then the fire spread — unseen and fast — through walls and floors and ceilings.
Roy said the rapid spread had a lot to do with the age of the house, which was built in the 1920s.
“The older houses were built much differently than today,” he said. “The older houses have open space, gaps in the walls and ceilings and it allows flames to travel through void spaces.”
This building technique is known as “balloon framing” and went out of favor by the 1940s, precisely because it offered flames unobstructed space to spread.
Houses today are generally built using platform framing — which includes wooden barriers that can retard the progress of a fire.
“Luckily there were no flames inside the house,” said Watson. “It would have been a lot more dangerous.”
Nonetheless, the fire left the house uninhabitable — despite the fact the rear façade took most of the damage. Roy said it isn’t just fire and smoke that destroy property. Fighting the fire adds water damage to the mix.
One fortunate coincidence: just hours before the fire, Blackstone FD took delivery of a brand-new engine. Watson’s house was the new vehicle’s first call and it performed flawlessly, Roy said.
Watson is hoping to find baby pictures and similar mementos once the family is allowed to sift through the charred interior — but, for now, he’s got more pressing needs. Such as clothing. The Watsons escaped with their lives and their pets, but little else.
That fact spurred the Blackstone Police Department to make a community appeal to help the Watsons get back on their feet. Clothing for twin seven-year-old girls is needed — as well as boys clothing for a three-year-old and a one-year-old. Donation boxes are set up in the police/fire dispatch lobby at the town’s municipal office building — and police said gift cards are also welcome.
“Hopefully, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime situation that people go through,” Watson said. “Everything just happened in moments and a lot of people stood up for us.”
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