The male resident of a Sandy Hook home escaped unharmed when his home went up in flames late Wednesday evening, April 22. The dwelling at 122 Riverside Road, however, was completely destroyed. Firefighters were also challenged with saving a second home located to the immediate south of where the fire was.

All five of Newtown’s fire companies were dispatched at 11:38 pm to the scene, approximately 300 yards north of Riverside’s intersection with Bancroft Road. Sandy Hook Volunteer Fire & Rescue Chief Bill Halstead was the commanding officer at the scene.

Upon arrival, firefighters encountered a home that was fully involved in flames. Chief Halstead was first to arrive at the scene, and found the burning building was already threatening the neighboring home when he arrived.

“The exposure was the biggest concern,” he said Thursday morning. “When I got there it was all inside” the house at 122 Riverside. “You could look right through it and see the glow inside it.

“By the time I got out of my truck and got my coat on, a window had popped on the exposure side,” he continued. With flames through that window and then through the roof of the burning building, “the house was gone at that point.”

The Assessor’s Database shows 122 Riverside as a single-family Cape built in 1950 with 1,074 square feet of living area. Records indicate it is owned by Thomas E. Pundy.

That house was just 30 feet from the neighboring home. With flames from the Cape taller than the 2½-story dwelling to its south, firefighters focused immediate efforts on saving the northern wall of the house at 118 Riverside in addition to dumping water on the burning structure they were dispatched to.

“The one side has quite a bit of damage, but it didn’t get into the house,” Chief Halstead said of 118 Riverside, where three people live. The fire “just got the exterior” of the second home, he said.

Chief Halstead said approximately 50-60 firefighters responded to the call. Fire marshals also responded to the scene, both during the initial call and again a few hours later, after daybreak.

By mid-Thursday morning, Fire Marshal Rich Frampton said the location was determined but cause of the fire was unclear.

“It started in the bathroom, and the area that it started has a light switch with an outlet,” he said after revisiting the scene. “It’s also backed up to the chimney for a wood stove.

“We don’t know if the chimney started or if something happened with the bathroom,” he added. The fire marshal noted the homeowner was doing renovations to his home, which may have contributed to the fire.

It took approximately 45 minutes for firefighters to fully knock down the fire. Extensive overhaul was then done for another hour.

A portable pond was set up on Riverside Road at its intersection of Bancroft Road, providing water to firefighters. Tankers shuttled water in from a dry hydrant at the northern end of Riverside Road, and also from a hydrant located outside Sandy Hook’s main station.

Eversource was contacted, with a request to send a representative as soon as possible, to cut power to both structures.

“We had two power lines, one for each house, that were burning, so there was a chance of that falling on people,” Chief Halstead explained.

Newtown Volunteer Ambulance Corps sent a crew to the scene, per protocol for a structure fire.

Southbury Volunteer Fire sent a crew, including a pumper and a tanker, to Sandy Hook’s main station for coverage during the fire. That crew, and a Sandy Hook crew, responded to a commercial fire alarm during the structure fire. Mutual aid was also received from Stepney, who sent a crew to cover Botsford’s firehouse and another to Dodgingtown’s firehouse.

The restoration company JP Maguire was contacted, and sent an employee to board over damage done to the home at 118 Riverside Road.

The Red Cross was also contacted, to assist all four people affected by the fire. While there were no injuries reported to any of the occupants, one cat was missing from the 122 Riverside Road residence, Fire Marshal Frampton noted.

Firefighters cleared from the scene at 2:19 Thursday morning. Sandy Hook returned to service at 3:20, once all apparatus, tools and gear were cleaned, Chief Halstead said.