House fire near Clough Pond in Loudon leaves significant damage

A Loudon family was getting ready for bed after lighting their fireplace on a blisteringly cold Tuesday night when they began to smell smoke and hear crackling, popping sounds, according to Loudon’s deputy fire chief, William Lake.

The fire department responded at 10:15 p.m. to a call at 115 Berry Road near Clough Pond. The family and their pet escaped without injury, Lake said, but the house sustained significant damage.

The one-story ranch-style home was built in 2022 and belongs to Todd and Stephanie Gaignat, according to property records.

Lake said that when firefighters arrived, smoke was pouring from the entire length of the roof.

“We were pretty confident we had a pretty good fire in the attic, which is what was happening,” Lake said. “We basically had crews go in, they opened up the ceiling, got into the attic and extinguished the fire.”

The source of the flames is still unconfirmed, Lake said, but investigators believe the fire either started in the attic or in the chimney, where a piece of insulation could have gotten too close to a wood stove pipe.

Fire damage was contained mostly to the roof and attic, but Lake said the rest of the house suffered water damage from the firefighting efforts.

The home was near the end of Berry Road, a single-lane dirt road that wraps around Clough Pond. Those conditions make it “very tough” to access water supply and get large trucks in and out, according to Lake.

“We’ve done some pre-planning and trainings on talking about how we handle fires out there, which obviously helped last night,” Lake said. “Basically, we had to stage a lot of people out off that road and bring people in, kind of one at a time, so we didn’t bugger up the whole road.”

Fire crews from Belmont, Barnstead, Boscawen, Canterbury, Chichester, Concord, Epsom, Gilmanton, Pembroke and Pittsfield assisted at the scene. The Allenstown Fire Department covered Loudon’s station during the emergency.

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