Chief: Fire That Destroyed Home Friday Started in Chimney

Amherst Fire Chief Mark Boynton said Monday that a fire that destroyed a home at 3 Brookwood Drive on Friday was caused by another improperly constructed chimney.

Boynton said the home had a woodstove insert in a fireplace and that the chimney was not capable of handling the heat it gave off. The fire started due to combustible materials – the wall – being too close to the chimney itself. Boynton said the fire climbed right up the wall and destroyed the home in the process.

Boynton on Friday said the fire department, with the assistance of more than a half dozen other towns, had made a good save on the house. Monday he said the structure would be salvageable, but the interior would have to be completely remodeled. 

The home, owned by Herb Kopf, caught fire sometime shortly before noon on Friday, Dec. 13. A neighbor, Heather Bartis, had taken her 2-year-old out to play in the snow when she smelled smoke. Going around the side of her home at 1 Brookwood Drive, she saw smoke coming out of Kopf's house.

She ran up to the house, pounding on the door to alert her neighbor of the situation. He was not home. Bartis was the one who made the 911 call. 

Boynton said in an email over the weekend it took 11 minutes for the first fire truck to make it to the home, a symptom of having an all-volunteer department. The national standard is a four-minute response time, which is very difficult for a department that doesn't have a staff at the firehouse, he said. 

Boynton said police and EMS were on the scene within that four-minute time frame, available to assist anyone who may have been at the home.

This is the fifth fire in about a year that has been caused by the construction of a chimney without today's standard of fire protection. In October, after a similar fire on Old Milford Road, Boynton expressed concern about a growing trend of chimney fires in homes built in the 1960s and 1970s timeframe when Amherst experienced a housing boom but lacked the building inspection process it has today.

Boynton encouraged residents with fireplaces in homes, especially ones built before the 80s, to make sure their homes are up to code and not presenting similar danger. They should have heating appliances, fireplaces and chimneys cleaned and inspected annually. The proper spacing between the brick surface and the combustible surface is a minimum of 2 inches.

For more information on how to determine if your home is safe, contact the Amherst Fire Department at 673-1545 or building officials at 673-6041.