By Owen Boss
Staff Writer
HUNTINGTON - Firefighters from three towns rushed to a house off Searle Road Wednesday night to extinguish a fire that engulfed a small shed housing a family's outdoor furnace.
According to Fire Chief Gary Dahill, at 7:15 p.m., three fire engines and about a dozen firefighters were dispatched to 84 Searle Road for a report that an outdoor wood-burning furnace had burst into flames and the fire was threatening to spread to the house nearby.
By the time firefighters arrived on scene, Dahill said the outdoor furnace, which was about 10 feet from the base of the family's porch, was completely engulfed in flames.
"The homeowner had gotten his hose out and was spraying down his porch to keep it wet so that it wouldn't spread," Dahill said. "We were definitely concerned for the house."
Once firefighters had positioned several tanker trucks up the family's steep dirt driveway, Dahill said it took about 15 minutes to extinguish the blaze, which spared only the metal furnace itself and left a smoldering pile of debris where the shed once stood.
The homeowner's decision to use an outdoor furnace to generate the family's heat and hot water was a fortunate one, Dahill said, because had the same fire begun in a furnace within the house, the situation could have been much worse.
The Russell and Westhampton Fire Departments assisted with the fire, Dahill said, and a Huntington police vehicle and a state police cruiser were called in to block the entrance to the driveway.
Owen Boss can be reached at oboss@gazettenet.com.
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