HARTLAND — Sick with bronchitis, Mellaney Drew arrived home Saturday night planning to take a hot bath and get some needed sleep.
Instead, smoke poured out the door of her two-story house.
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“I had just come home, and we opened the door, and smoke just started barreling out of the door. So I ran across the street and called 911,” she said Monday.
It wasn’t until after she made the call at 6:19 p.m. from a neighbor’s house that she saw flames behind her windows.
Drew, 42, who bought the house at 173 Pittsfield Ave. in 2009 and was trying to sell it, said she does not know whether it can be repaired. She lived there with three other adults and a 5-year-old girl.
Though the structure remains, the flames scorched the interior, ripped through the floor and burned her stairs. There is extensive smoke and water damage, said Hartland Fire Chief Donald Neal.
“The people that lived there were smart enough not to go in,” Neal said. “I think if they left the door open, it would have been a whole lot worse, because everything was blackened inside; and that’s all it needed, was more air to really get going.”
Sgt. Ken Grimes, with the Office of the Maine State Fire Marshal, said an electrical malfunction near a computer table probably started the fire.
Drew lived in the house with her niece, her niece’s daughter, her niece’s boyfriend and a family friend. She said she had refurbished the old home, which had tin ceilings and wooden floors.
“I’m completely devastated,” she said. “I really had a beautiful, beautiful home.”
On Saturday, her housemates had convinced her to come with them to visit friends and get some fresh air, as she had been sick for several weeks, she said.
“It was just to try to get me to feel better,” she said.
Now she’s not sure what to do, she said. She is staying with her sister in St. Albans and waiting for damage estimates and recommendations from her insurance company.
“I never thought this could ever happen to me,” she said.
The home was on the market for the last six months, and she had planned to finalize paperwork on Monday to list it for another six months, she said.
It took Hartland firefighters five minutes from the time of the 911 call to reach the scene. St. Albans firefighters then joined them. Pittsfield firefighters also responded, but the fire was out by the time they arrived, Neal said.
The fire was mostly extinguished in 15 to 20 minutes, Neal said, but rescue crews were on scene more than an hour.
Erin Rhoda — 612-2368
erhoda@centralmaine.com
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