Last Thursday afternoon, one of the coldest days this season, a fire broke out in a large house in Bridgehampton and firefighters battled it for nearly 10 hours. The house was a total loss.
About 100 firefighters from Amagansett to Hampton Bays were summoned to tackle the stubborn fire at 9 West Pond Drive, a 9,000-square-foot house across from Campbell Stables off Newlight Lane. Smoke was first reported in the basement at 1:25 p.m.
When Bridgehampton Fire Chief Mark Balserus arrived, he found smoke. John Rankin, a Southampton Town fire marshal who happened to be nearby when he heard the call, was already there. Mr. Rankin said on Monday that there was “a considerable amount of smoke” coming from the basement when he walked around to the back of the house.
The homeowner is George Gavalas, according to Southampton Town tax records, and his wife and daughter were home at the time. They quickly got out.
A Bridgehampton firefighter later interviewed by Mr. Rankin for the investigation into the cause had also been nearby and went directly to the scene. He made it down to the basement and reported seeing smoke in a far corner of the finished basement, near a gas-fed boiler.
Mr. Rankin said that between the size of the residence and the way it had been built, the fire proved difficult to put out, with pockets of flames popping up from behind walls well into the evening. The house, which was about 10 years old, he said, was made with manufactured as opposed to all-wood beams. While often used in residential and commercial construction, they do not do well in a fire, as pockets of fire are able to get inside easily, he said. “It’s good construction, it just doesn’t hold up in a fire.”
“They did make a real good effort to get down in there,” Mr. Rankin said of firefighters’ three attempts to enter the basement.
“The floor began getting ‘spongy,’ and we made the call to pull everyone out,” Chief Balserus said. The safety concern was warranted, given that soon after that the first floor collapsed into the basement.
“At that point we had to fight it from the outside,” he said. “There was a tremendous effort made by our own department and all the mutual aid agencies to bring the fire under control.”
Despite dousing the house with a large amount of water from an aerial ladder truck, firefighters were still finding flames as the night dragged on.
As a last resort, an excavator was brought in and “punched a hole through the front of the house” to get at the fire, Mr. Rankin said. At one point, when its bucket was working on the second floor, “the whole attic and everything else lit up.”
While portions of the house remained standing even after the excavator had done its work, it was a complete loss.
“We try to preserve as much of the scene as possible,” the fire marshal said. Even so, Mr. Rankin has not been able to pinpoint a cause yet, nor has he been able to get to the basement, where there is a pool of water. The homeowners’ insurance company knows it will have to pump it out, at which time the investigation will continue.
In all, eight departments — Bridgehampton, Southampton, Sag Harbor, North Sea, Springs, East Hampton, Amagansett, and Hampton Bays — responded to the fire. The Montauk and East Quogue Fire Departments were moved to neighboring firehouses to assist while firefighters were in Bridgehampton. All firefighters were not released until around 11 p.m.
Temperatures were about 20 degrees and falling last Thursday night. Many of the trucks had icicles hanging from them, and firefighters’ gear appeared to be frozen from the spray of the hoses. Water ran down from the property into the street, making for slippery conditions.
Emergency medical personnel from the Bridgehampton, East Hampton, Southampton Village, Southampton Volunteer, and Sag Harbor ambulance companies responded. No injuries were reported.
