Granville house destroyed by fire; pets perished

Post-Star (Glen Falls, NY)

Jan. 31--GRANVILLE -- A fire destroyed a house on Route 40 in North Granville on Wednesday.

North Granville Fire Chief Scott McCullen said no one was home at the time, and the fire did not appear to be suspicious. Washington County fire investigators were on scene and McCullen said Wednesday afternoon they were still working to determine the cause.

A passerby reported seeing heavy smoke at around 9:30 a.m., coming from a two-story wooden structure located at 10261 Route 40, which is about a mile south of the State Police station.

Firefighters responded from area departments, including North Granville, Middle Granville, Granville, Hartford, Whitehall, Fort Ann, West Fort Ann, Kingsbury, Argyle, Kingston, Hebron and Vermont companies Wells, West Pawlet and Poultney. McCullen said about 60 to 70 firefighters responded.

They were battling the blaze with hand lines and using chainsaws to open up the roof and siding to get at hot spots.

McCullen said the departments used the tactic "surround and drown," because the structure was too unstable and unsafe for any interior firefighting.

"The structure was so deteriorated," he said. "The fire had already went up the main timbers."

Tanker trucks carted water to the scene from Hartford and Granville. A nearby pond was too small and too frozen to be of use. So were North Granville's other outdoor sources of water.

"We had trucks freezing up; we had our fill sites frozen up, that's why we had to call so many tankers in Hartford and Middle Granville for water, six or seven miles for water, so that was a big challenge," McCullen said. "That's the problem you run into in the winter time. You're limited on your sources of where you can get water from."

Toward the end of the response, hoses doused the roof line with between 500 and 600 gallons of water a minute, causing shingles to fly off. A small tree in the front yard was saturated with water and ice. McCullen said they cleared the scene around 3:30 p.m.

Sitting in a truck and watching the firefighters douse his home, James Pawlikowski Jr. said he was not home at the time, nor were any family members. His child was in school. He believed his family's pet bunny and cat did not escape, something McCullen confirmed later in the day.

Pawlikowski said he had shuttered the house while his wife was away with family in Connecticut. He had been staying with his mother-in-law, and was driving her back from an appointment at Glens Falls Hospital when another family member called to say a house was on fire near the Granville State Police station.

"We came back to see if it was ours, and it was," Pawlikowski said.

He did not know what caused the fire, but said he had left a small electric heater going inside.

Pawlikowski said his whole life was in the house, which he and his family have lived in for 15 years. He had just paid it off and had no insurance. He was grateful, though, that no one was hurt, and was glad that many family photos are saved digitally.

"God bless these firemen," he said, as dozens of firefighters worked in below-freezing temperatures. "I'm still in a bit of shock."

McCullen said Red Cross had contacted him to see if Pawlikowski and his family needed assistance, but McCullen said Pawlikowski declined.

A stretch of Route 40 was closed for several hours in the vicinity of the scene.

North Granville has had a string of fires recently.

A family lost a house at 10376 state Route 22 to a fire in December. Firefighters responded to a smoky fire at the Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics plant in November and were able to keep the blaze from spreading into the building. In October, a Granville woman died when she was unable to get out of her home during a fire believed to have been caused by an overloaded power strip.

"I thought we were going to have a clean slate for 2019," McCullen said. "This will be number six for structure fires in North Granville since July, so it looks like this year is not starting out very well."

Granville house fire

Firefighters battle a blaze Wednesday at 10261 Route 40 in Granville.

Granville house destroyed by fire; pets perished

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