Firefighters douse blaze in Burke

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Denise A. Raymo

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September 23, 2008

<a href="mailto:draymo@pressrepublican.com">By DENISE RAYMO</a> The Press Republican Tue Sep 23, 2008, 10:58 AM EDT

BURKE — Alton Cook was talking on the phone with his wife about 7:30 a.m. Tuesday when an explosion upstairs abruptly ended the call.

“She thinks I joke all the time, so when I said, ‘I gotta go. The house is on fire,’ she didn’t believe me,” he said, standing outside his home at 468 Flynn Road amid charred furniture and other family belongings.

Firefighters from Burke responded, with mutual aid from Chateaugay, Malone, Constable and Bangor.

This was the second fire Cook has had at his farm. The first fire, in 1995, destroyed his barn, killing more than 100 head of cattle. It was caused by an electrical malfunction.

Tuesday’s was a lot different.

“There’s a cap in the wall (from) when the house was built, and over the years, it rusted,” Cook said, repeating information he’d learned from the Franklin County Cause and Origin Team investigators.

He said the flames and heat from the chimney he uses now built up and blew the rusted cap out, causing the blast he heard.

“I never knew it was there,” he said of the hidden stove cap. “The house was built in 1962, and later they just finished walls over it.

“I don’t know if it was the air getting to it or what, but it just exploded and burned the upstairs and the bathroom. There’s a lot of water damage in the kitchen.

“They haven’t let me back in, so I don’t really know how bad it is,” Cook said Tuesday morning, “but the whole roof is opened up for ventilation.”

Cook does have some insurance, but he isn’t sure if it will cover all of the family’s losses.

“I’m just glad no one was hurt. And I hope this is a lesson to other people” to check older homes for a similar cap that may be sealed off and covered over.

E-mail Denise A. Raymo at:

draymo@pressrepublican.com