House Fire Closes North Sea Road
A fire that broke out at an unoccupied home Monday afternoon caused a section of North Sea Road in Southampton to be closed for an hour.
Southampton Fire Department Chief Dennis Roy said a passerby reported smoke coming from a second story window at a home next to a Coastal Gas Station, just north of the County Road 39 intersection. Firefighters responded to 364 North Sea Road at 2:52 p.m. and found that the second floor was full of smoke. “You couldn’t see in there,” Roy said. “The smoke was too thick.”
The first firefighters on scene checked two bedrooms and found that they were unoccupied and nothing was burning in either room, but a third bedroom was locked, according to Roy. He said a crew then went back to break down the door of the locked room, where a bunk bed was ablaze and the flames spread to a closet. It took about 10 minutes to extinguish the flames, Roy said, and the windows were broken to let the smoke out. There were about three inches of water on the second floor from the firehouses, so firefighters were drilling a hole to let the water drain downstairs and out of the house, he added.
Six firefighters who entered the smoke-filled home were rehabbed by Southampton Volunteer Ambulance personnel as a precaution, as is standard procedure, Roy said.
The homeowner arrived on scene. She said she rents the house out to tenants and she does not know what could have caused the fire.
Roy said the house is currently uninhabitable, but there was no structural damage.