Dry conditions impede fight with fire

By CHARLIE BUTERBAUGH

LAVA, NY — The National Weather Service’s severe thunderstorm watch was just ending when a fire sparked by lightning began to overcome a building along Route 52.

Eleanor Wells’ chicken coop burned to the ground last Wednesday evening in a fire that began about 5:30 p.m. and kept volunteers working into darkness as they struggled to get sufficient water to the property.

The Lava Fire Department was first on the scene, followed by Narrowsburg. Lava Chief George Strumpfler said trucks from both departments ran out of water within minutes, and fire fighters had to wait for the Welcome Lake and Beach Lake departments in Pennsylvania to arrive with extra water.

Lake Huntington’s crew arrived as the flames began to succumb to streams of water that came in intermittent bursts.

“We had a hard time trying to get water,” said Narrowsburg Chief Craig Burkle. Initially, the water was being trucked in tankers from the town pond, located by the Tusten highway barn on Route 97, but a truck nearly got stuck in mud, and the departments were ordered to pump water from Little Lake Erie in Narrowsburg, “which is a long way to go,” Burkle said.

Firemen from Beach Lake stood by at the Narrowsburg firehouse in case another emergency occurred.

The tin roof on the old barn retained the heat inside as flames roared upwards and torched trees. Firemen eventually pulled the roof off and doused the ground to prevent the flames from rekindling, though Burkle said the fire did not endanger any nearby houses.

Wells said her parents bought the farm in 1927 from Louis Dietrich, who built the chicken coop in the early 1900s. They raised white leghorn chickens on the farm until about 1950, when her father began raising dairy cattle.