Moira home destroyed by fire

<a href="mailto:avanvalkenburg@pressrepublican.com">By ANDREA VanVALKENBURG</a>
Staff Writer

February 17, 2009 04:00 pm

— MOIRA — Neighbors called 911 Tuesday morning when they saw thick smoke billowing from a Sayles Road farmhouse.
The two-story residence went up in flames around 7 a.m. and brought more than 50 firefighters to the area for a several-hour battle to fight the blaze.
“It was fully involved when I got there,” Brushton Fire Chief Michael Barse said after returning to the local station Tuesday afternoon.
Volunteers from Brushton, Moira, Dickinson, Bombay and Bangor doused the home through the morning, but it was destroyed by the blaze.
“For the amount of fire that was there, it was a fairly quick knockdown, but there was nothing to save,” Barse said, as crews worked to get back into service around 1 p.m.
The home at 152 Sayles Road was recently purchased and was being rented out, though no one was home when the fire broke out.
Barse believed there were animals in the home that perished in the blaze.
He said Red Cross was notified about the fire, but officials at that agency said they had not been contacted by the displaced tenants as of Tuesday afternoon.
It was unclear where the tenants, whose names were not immediately available, would be staying as they recover.
Franklin County Fire Coordinator Malcolm Jones said the county’s Cause and Origin Team was continuing to investigate the cause of the fire Tuesday afternoon.
Barse and Jones were unsure who owned the home.
No firefighters were hurt during the blaze.