— by Eric Francis

9/18/23

A raging fire that destroyed an unoccupied home in a remote section of Norwich was spotted shortly before 1:20 a.m. Monday morning by a Vermont State Police trooper performing a lonely patrol of Interstate 91 Northbound where the highway crosses over the Ompompanoosuc River.

Norwich’s firefighters were called out of a sound sleep, along with other volunteers from the towns of Thetford, Strafford, and Hartland and the overnight duty crews from the professional departments in neighboring Hanover, Lebanon, and Hartford.

The trooper who reported the fire narrowed the area down to somewhere along Hemlock Road, a dead-end road running along the south bank of the Ompompanoosuc from Route 5 near the confluence with the Connecticut River back nearly to edge of the interstate, where three now-vacant houses are clustered.

The entirety of Hemlock Road was shut down following the July floods, when an inspection found the road’s embankment had been eroded. Residents were vacated, power was shut off to the area, and the town has been “working through the complexities” of fixing it, Town Manager Brennan Duffy told the selectboard a couple of weeks ago.

Norwich Fire Chief Alex Northern was the first to get to Hemlock Road from the Route 5 side at 1:31 a.m. and he had to hike in on foot. Northern initially reported that he couldn’t see anything from the intersection but by 1:38 a.m. he had walked about a mile past the concrete Jersey Barriers closing off the road and he was able to report, “This will be a fully-involved structure fire. We will have to figure out how to attack this. There are no exposures.”

Asked by Hanover Dispatch if he would like a fire investigator from the Vermont State Police Fire Marshal’s Office, Chief Northern replied “Definitely!”

At 1:50 a.m., the chief, still the lone person at the scene at that point, reported, “The structure is almost down on the ground.”

Hartford Chief Scott Cooney and Thetford Chief Chad Whitcomb set up on Interstate 91 near Mile Marker 80 and the duty crew on Hatford Engine 3 began cutting through the barrier fence that runs along the east side of the interstate so that Chief Whitcomb could find a path through to the scene on Thetford’s ATV—after first encountering a “sheer cliff,” he was able to reach the scene about 10 minutes later, coming out onto Hemlock Road by a yellow house.

Despite the successful effort to reach the scene from the interstate, at 2:45 a.m., with the structure a complete loss, Chief Northern declared the fire under control and released several of the departments that had come to provide mutual aid, while keeping Norwich, Thetford and Hanover to overhaul the scene in the pre-dawn hours.

The Norwich Department of Public Works was called out to remove the barriers from the road in order to give firefighters and fire investigators access to the scene for a cause-and-origin investigation that was expected to begin in earnest at first light.

This is a breaking story. More details may be added as they come in.