Fire Destroys Garage
On Hebard Hill Road
By Sandy Cooch

With a snowmobile outing planned for Saturday morning, David and Cherry Lloyd took a quick trip Friday afternoon to Randolph village for a stop at the bank and grocery store. They returned to their Hebard Hill home not long afterwards to find two fire departments battling a fierce garage fire that was threatening their home, just 25 feet away.

In the end, Randolph Center and Village firefighters saved the Lloyd home, but the garage—containing their sleds, already on a trailer and ready to roll, plus three motorcycles, a camper, and other equipment—were all destroyed.

With adverse conditions (temperatures at -10° and a light breeze) and a garage full of accelerants, fighting the well-fueled blaze was a five-hour ordeal for firefighters, RCFD Chief Al Floyd said this week.

The spraying water froze on every surface, and the Randolph road crew was called in to spread sand on the scene so firemen could stand. By the end, Floyd said, the 40 firefighters were themselves "blocks of ice."

"It was really, really cold," he said.

This week Lloyd said she and her husband heard the fire alarm as they headed into the bank. They went on to do their shopping, and on the way home noticed the Village fire station was empty of its trucks.

"Must be a big fire," she commented to her husband. As they continued up Route 66, and saw the clouds of dark smoke, they realized it was their property, and feared it was their home.

It almost was.

Chief Floyd, one of the first on scene, reported this week that flames and smoke were coming out of the front garage doors, and "over the northeast corner, licking over the roof and impinging on the house."

"The main worry was the house," he said, "so we put a couple of hoses between the house and garage and pushed the fire back north. We lost the garage and saved the house."

The vinyl siding on one side of the house was a little melted, Cheryl Lloyd said, but the house was essentially unharmed.

Lloyd said an insurance inspector determined the fire cause to be electrical. She said her husband, who spends long hours tinkering with their "toys" in the garage, plans to rebuild the structure. Besides the equipment listed above, the Lloyds also lost two all-terrain vehicles, one lawn tractor, one snowblower, a motor for a boat, and hand tools.

Lloyd expressed her profound thanks for the fire departments and their heroic efforts in the bitter cold conditions.

Lloyd said she and her husband stayed outside to watch the firefighters work. She cried, at the time, she said, but is mostly feeling grateful that no one was hurt or killed, and that their home was spared.

"I can’t say enough about the firemen," she said.

Chief Floyd noted that RVFD lost a portable tank, which was crushed, and that, afterwards, it took quite a while for equipment to thaw and melt.

"If there had been another fire, it would have been miserable," he commented. Floyd noted that McDonald’s provided free coffee, hamburgers, and fries to firefighters after they left the fire scene.

Floyd noted that last Friday’s fire was the third destructive garage fire that his department had responded to since the fall. Others were an early January garage fire at the Richburg residence, and one at the Pete Jacques property on the East Bethel Road in the fall.

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