House fire leaves Centerville man, dog homeless

Nov. 30--HYANNIS -- The sun had nearly set on an Italian-style Thanksgiving feast of meatballs, sausage and chicken Parmesan when Tony Vespa heard the first pound on the front door.

Then another loud bang rang out near the garage.

Outside, Vespa saw his Centerville neighbor Thomas Hoppe, 74, clutching his dog and screaming for help. Three people inside dialed 911 at about 4:50 p.m. as 6 Coach Light Road burned next door, bathing the neighborhood in a fiery glow.

It was just the latest calamity, Hoppe said Friday, in a history of hardship.

"Now I have nothing," Hoppe said, sitting with his dog, Honey B., in a room at Comfort Inn in Hyannis where the American Red Cross of Massachusetts gave him emergency shelter. "I have my pajamas, I have my slippers. I have nothing."

"Nothing," he repeated.

On Friday, Hoppe tried to pick up the pieces.

Calls came in from family. The Red Cross, which is paying for him to stay at the motel through Monday, gave him a winter coat and tote bag of T-shirts, socks, a sweater and fleece jacket. "When you lose everything, you need a good start," said Hilary Greene, executive director of the Cape and Islands chapter of the American Red Cross.

In a glimmer of hope, Hoppe said Jane Starinskas of the St. Vincent de Paul Society called and said builders and contractors sometimes lend their services to fire victims in his position.

"God bless you," Hoppe said, his eyes filled with tears. "I don't need perfect. I need habitable."

Hoppe said he was left with little else but his dog and home after suffering losses in the stock market within the past decade and falling victim to an investment scam. A back injury suffered during his military service in the 1960s has prevented him from working more than three or four hours a day in his landscaping business, Sandwich/Centerville Lawncare, he said.

His pickup truck was "wiped out in the garage," Hoppe said.

"Now I'm out of business," he said. "I don't know what I'm going to do."

With only his landscaping income and Social Security, Hoppe said, he was unable to buy home insurance. According to Barnstable assessor's records, Hoppe bought the home in 1996 from a family trust. Its current assessed value is $228,300.

Hoppe said he has been forced to find savings wherever he can, such as by burning junk mail and other paper in his fireplace rather than paying for trash removal.

On Thursday, Hoppe said, he was burning paper in the fireplace while cleaning the kitchen and dishes when he noticed smoke around the ceiling. He opened doors, but the smoke was only growing thicker.

His first instinct was to check the fireplace, "but it wasn't coming from the fireplace," Hoppe said. He went to the basement, then to the second floor, but the source of the smoke was nowhere to be found.

"It was so confusing," he said.

Capt. Sean Greene of the Centerville-Osterville-Marstons Mills Fire Department said the blaze appeared to have started near the fireplace.

"We don't have a definite answer at this point, but we don't have any suspicions about the fire," he said Friday.

Returning downstairs to find the living room engulfed in flames, Hoppe rushed to the bedroom, grabbed his 15-year-old dog around the waist and headed out the door.

"She's my pretty girl," Hoppe said, as the dog trembled on the hotel room bed. "She's my baby."

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