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Poland home catches fire, cause unknown
POLAND
Officials are investigating the cause of a fire that destroyed a 7855 Lee Run Road home.
Brian Goodin, Poland Township police chief, said the woman who lives there, her son and two dogs all got out without injury.
The cause of the fire and the amount of damage were not known Wednesday, said Jim Stewart, Western Reserve Joint Fire District assistant chief. Firefighters still were putting the fire out just after 1 p.m. Both floors of the home had major fire and water damage, Stewart said.
“At this point, it looks like it’s probably a total loss,” said the homeowner, Tom McGoogan. He received a call from his wife while he was working at Ivy Woods Manor in North Lima. She told him about the fire and that she, their son and the dogs were out and OK.
“Sometimes my wife overreacts a little bit, so I wasn’t sure,” McGoogan said. “It wasn’t until I got down the bend there that I saw the smoke coming up into the sky, and I knew that the house was burning.”
When McGoogan got home, it was engulfed in flames.
He said the fire started in his son’s bedroom.
“We don’t know yet exactly what happened,” McGoogan said. “His bedroom was on fire when I got home. Flames were coming out the window [and] out of the rest of the house.”
He and his wife bought the home in 2001 and just finished some renovations.
About 12:30 p.m., firefighters were breaking all windows in the house to ventilate smoke. At 12:45, they were cutting through the roof with a saw. Just before 1 p.m., flames could be seen from a window at the rear of the house. It was extinguished, but flames became visible from the roof above the window shortly after.
Stewart said this fire was “hard” to put out because of the way the home was structured.
“The way the house is constructed, the staircases and things don’t line up ... it’s a story and a half, [and we] didn’t know where it was at,” Stewart said.
Springfield, New Middle- town Village and Beaver Township firefighters assisted the Western Reserve Joint Fire District.