Westfield Fire Capt. Seth Ellis and firefighter Daniel Lorenzatti work to uncover some stubborn smoldering embers at the remains of a Russellville Road house which burned to the ground late Wednesday evening. Photo by Carl E. Hartdegen)
WESTFIELD – A house which may have stood on Russellville Road since the turn of the century is no longer there after a fire late Wednesday.
An emergency dispatcher for the city reported at 10:28 Wednesday evening that multiple callers had reported a fire at 467 Russellville Road and the first responder, city police officer Nathan Osowski, reports that the house was fully engulfed in flames when he arrived.
When fire apparatus began to arrive six minutes after the first officer, the house was found to be unoccupied and beyond saving. City firefighters did not need assistance with the blaze but, since there are no fire hydrants in the area, the fire department at Barnes Airport was asked to send their tanker truck to the scene and shuttled water to firefighters working there
The cellar hole is all that is left of a Russellville Road house which burned late Wednesday night. (Photo by Carl E. Hartdegen)
“We put the fire out and protected exposure” to other buildings on the property which could have been at risk from the fire said Dep. Fire Chief Patrick Egloff.
The cause of the fire was investigated the next day by Egloff with State Trooper Michael Mazza of the state fire marshal’s office and city Det. Lt. David Ragazzini but the cause of the fire could not be immediately determined.
“It’s burnt to the ground. It’s burnt to the cellar hole, that makes it very difficult” to determine how the fire started, Egloff said.
The house is literally gone with only a few charred timbers outlining the cellar hole where the stump of a chimney, piping and what was probably once a furnace remain.
The owner, reportedly Marshall Harris of Springfield, had recently bought the house, Ragazzini said, and had been doing some renovations before moving in. Ragazzini confirmed that nobody had been in the house during the fire.
The fieldstone foundation of the house can be seen in the hole and the construction suggests that it was not done in recent years.
A neighbor said that she thought the house dated from “the turn of the (20th) century” and said that the new owner had closed on the house less than two weeks earlier.
