News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
Putnam County Fire Department was on the scene of a house fire for nine hours Tuesday morning.
Chief Tom Brown said that responders were called to a 4,700 square foot home on Bennett Road around 1:45 a.m. He said that the first responding unit reported fire through the roof of the house.
“It was rapidly discovered that the attic was fully involved,” Brown said. “So we burned the roof off of it, basically, the roof collapsed into the second floor, and in the back corner the second floor collapsed into the first floor before we got a handle on the fire.”
Brown said that the cause of the fire is still under investigation. He said that the homeowner was home during the time of the fire. He said he was transported to the hospital for smoke inhalation but has since been treated and released.
Brown said that once an attic becomes involved there’s not much to be done. He said that typically attic fires are electrical in nature.
“Or this particular house had a fireplace so there’s a chimney to consider and there was a fire in the fireplace at the time,” Brown said. “There’s really nothing you can do with an attic fire other than some kind of detector in the attic, there’s not a good way to detect a fire in the attic other than seeing or smelling smoke.”
Brown said that the walls of the house are still standing and the roof is gone, so there are structural stability issues. He said that at the end of the day, it will probably be a total loss. Brown said that there will be some contents salvaged from the first floor of the home.
