Fire burns through family home
By Joey Pitchford
Published in News on December 8, 2016 5:18 PM
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Full SizeA father and daughter lost a home that had been in their family for generations Thursday evening after a small heater caused the building at 202 Claridge Nursery Road to catch fire, fire fighters said.
Hubert Daynor, 88, was spending time in the home when the small wood heater he was using for warmth caused the wood near the one-story house's ceiling to catch fire. Daynor said he went outside and saw the fire near the chimney, but there was nothing he could do to prevent it from spreading. Daynor was not injured in the fire.
Daynor currently lives with his daughter, Cheryl Cooper, 67, after he was forced to leave the home due to flooding from Hurricane Matthew. Mrs. Cooper said that he returned to the home every day to spend time there and make sure things were kept up, but that he had lost "near everything" in the flood.
"I just thank God, because a family member called me and told me 'Cheryl, you'd better get out here because there's a fire,'" she said. "I was just worried about Paw-Paw, but he was all right."
As fire fighters set about tearing unstable parts of the house down, Mrs. Cooper said that her father, grandparents and more had lived there for as long as she could remember. Smoke from the fire could be seen billowing upward for miles around.
The Little River Volunteer Fire Department was the first to respond. They were joined by the Rosewood and Belfast fire departments. They blocked off the road in front of the home, forcing oncoming traffic to turn back and find another way around.
A large, oval-shaped swath of grass next to the building was charred black by the fire. Little River Volunteer Fire Department Chief Tim Aycock said that that there had not been an explosion of any kind to cause that kind of burn -- rather the fire had just progressed to that point and not moved any further.