By Dean Narciso
The Columbus Dispatch
NORWICH TOWNSHIP, Ohio — Dry and windy — the perfect brew for an afternoon conflagration.
What likely began as a spark in a straw and hay barn in Brown Township quickly spread. A tire shed belched thick black smoke. Diesel tanks exploded. A transformer blew.
The blaze finally was contained more than four hours after the first 911 calls at 11:30 a.m. last Thursday. Four barns, outbuildings and a family home and animals were lost on the 85-acre farm.
Almost a week later, smoke still wafts from simmering mounds of hay at 1901 Jones Rd.
The blaze illustrates the challenge of rural fires in communities that commonly lack fire hydrants. Tanker trucks are deployed instead.
Norwich Township Fire Chief David Long said last week’s fire could have used more water faster. He has ordered that, in the future, an additional tanker truck be dispatched to rural fires.
“We had the water coming. We just had to wait for it to get there,” Long said.
The first Norwich fire engines, carrying 500 to 1,000 gallons each, arrived at the blaze four minutes after the 911 calls, according to dispatch records.
Joyce Durbin, 49, arrived at her smoke-filled childhood home 15 minutes after firefighters.
She asked them why they didn’t have water. They told her water was on the way.
“We’re out there going bananas because we’re watching firefighters sit on the ground as our home burns without water,” she said, estimating the wait at three to five minutes.
“There were 100 firefighters and 17 trucks, but we don’t have the source to fight the fire — water,” Durbin said.
Long and his crew had determined that the home was empty. In addition to trying to save it, they had several other structures ablaze and a grass fire running across the street.
The nearest water source, a mile north at Bradley High School, required tankers to navigate a parking lot and backtrack along Jones Road, then choked with emergency vehicles from nine departments.
Instead, tankers refilled at Thorn Apple Country Club. The golf course is 3 miles farther away but “easier and safer; tactically, it was a smoother rotation of water,” Long said.
Three tanker trucks, from Jerome Township, West Jefferson and Pleasant Valley fire departments, along with several engines, drove back and forth from the golf club to the fire.
Long will now ask Pleasant Valley to send a fourth tanker to rural fires to increase the water supply.
Norwich has no tankers of its own, because about 40,000 of its 42,000 customers reside in developed areas with hydrants.
The fire required 62,000 gallons of water. A typical house fire requires less than 1,000 gallons.
“It was a huge amount of water,” Long said. “That would fill a pretty good size swimming pool.”
Fire investigators continue to sort through rubble to determine the cause, Long said. Damage estimates could be as high as $200,000.
Two barns, grain silos and the original Brown Township Hall survived the fire. Two 4-month-old Holstein cows that Durbin’s cousin was raising were lost in the fire.
“I still wake up crying every day,” Durbin said, glancing at the charred second-floor window frame that she and three sisters once shared.
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