Blaze takes Boardman couple’s home
By Denise Dick
The fire chief estimates damage at $500,000.
BOARDMAN — Frank Fagnano and Stacey Northcutt plan an October wedding, but a fire Friday morning means they may be rebuilding their home.
Fagnano awoke about 6:30 a.m. “on a fluke” and remembered he had forgotten to set his fiancee’s alarm. When he got up to do that, he smelled smoke.
Fagnano looked for its source and found fire in the sauna room of the couple’s Yakata Dora Drive home.
“It started in the sauna room,” Fagnano said. “We never use the sauna room.”
He awoke Northcutt and when he returned to the sauna room, the flames had spread.
They called 911 and got out of the house without injury. Firefighters rescued one of their four cats, Millie, who suffered burns, but the other three, Titus, Sprinkles and Napoleon, haven’t been found.
Fire Chief James Dorman said that when firefighters arrived, flames were shooting through the roof. He believes the fire burned for a while before its discovery.
A cause hasn’t been determined, but he estimated the loss at about $500,000, a total loss.
Marlene Fagnano, Fagnano’s mother, said the couple, who plan an October wedding, have lived in the home a few months.
“It was arsoned before we bought it and they just finished remodeling it,” she said.
The single-story home, built in 1967 on a cul-de-sac, sprawled 3,222 square feet.
Charred wood and insulation is all that remains of the rear of the house. Firefighters were able to save important paperwork from Fagnano’s home office.
“It moved very quickly,” Dorman said.
The couple will stay with family, Marlene Fagnano said.
The call came in shortly before firefighters were to change shifts.
“An hour later, we would have closed the Lockwood station,” Dorman said.
Because of layoffs that occurred in February and summer vacations, fewer than the eight firefighters required to man two stations were to be on duty at 8 a.m.
The station at Lockwood Boulevard and Shields Road is the closest one to the Sherwood Forest development where Fagnano and Northcutt lived. Had it been closed, all firefighters working would have come from the main station on U.S. Route 224.
Since the layoff of nine firefighters, the South Avenue station has been closed for most shifts because of the manpower shortage.
The fire’s timing enabled crews from both the main and Lockwood stations to respond.
“That’s why I called for Canfield” for mutual aid, the chief said. “I knew there was not enough manpower to sustain a fire like this.” Before the layoff, 13 firefighters worked per shift. Taking summer vacations into account, Dorman figured 11 firefighters would have been working Friday morning had layoffs not occurred.
It’s difficult to quantify exactly how that would have changed things, he said.
“Every man you get out here helps,” Dorman said.