3-alarm fire heavily damages sawmill

A malfunctioning battery charger is being blamed for a three-alarm fire Sunday evening that caused extensive damage to a sawmill on Stoughton Pond Road.
http://rutlandherald.com/article/20140812/NEWS02/708129925

The burnt remains of a forklift and sheet metal sit in a back lot at a sawmill at Sheehan & Sons Lumber after the forklift caught fire Sunday night. Below, a coating of soot from the fire fills the building. Photo: PHOTOS BY LEN EMERYPublished August 12, 2014 in the Rutland Herald 3-alarm fire heavily damages sawmill By ERIC FRANCIS CORRESPONDENT PERKINSVILLE — A malfunctioning battery charger is being blamed for a three-alarm fire Sunday evening that caused extensive damage to a sawmill on Stoughton Pond Road. West Weathersfield Fire Chief Joshua Dauphin said that while the fire was initially quite fierce it was largely confined to one corner of the L-shaped metal building which houses Sheehan & Sons Lumber. “The charger looks to be the culprit,” Dauphin said. “It spread to (a forklift-like) loader and then to a whole bunch of reels of plastic banding so the majority of the fire was in that general area.” “The initial caller was a drive-by. They saw smoke and when we got there we had heavy fire out the rear of the structure,” Dauphin said. The building was completely closed up, according to the chief, and there was heavy heat and smoke coming from the ceiling down to within about 3 feet of the floor. “We had the fire knocked down in the first half hour but the biggest challenge was to vent the building. We had high levels of carbon monoxide along with the high temperatures and heavy smoke.” After Dauphin struck the third alarm for water tankers and additional manpower his West Weathersfield volunteer firefighters were joined at the scene by crews from Ascutney, West Windsor, Reading, Cavendish, Proctorsville, Windsor, Ludlow, Springfield, Chester, South Woodstock, Hartland and the New Hampshire towns of Cornish, Claremont and Charlestown. “We had at least 50 firefighters at the scene and we were there almost to midnight doing overhaul and getting at hot spots,” Dauphin said. “We didn’t have a fire investigator because it doesn’t look suspicious.” The sawmill, which is owned by Tom Sheehan, employs between five and 10 people during the week and crews sometimes work on the weekends as well. “There is extensive work that is going to need to be done to renovate the building but as far as the big generator that runs the machinery and the (lumber sawing) machinery itself there was no damage there,” Dauphin said. Early Sunday evening, Fire Departments from Springfield and several other communities responded to a 3 alarm fire at Sheehan & Sons lumber mill on Stoughton Pond Road.

The sawmill had to be completely rebuilt a few years ago when a previous fire burned it to the ground.