By Diane Pineiro-Zucker
Daily Freeman
SAUGERTIES, N.Y. — At least six fire departments responded, along with Centerville Cedar Grove firefighters, to the scene of a three-alarm house fire that engulfed a Brink Road home Wednesday afternoon.
At about 1 p.m. Wednesday, April 16, neighbors heard a loud explosion at 60 Brink Road. Tom Hinchey who lives across the street from the burned-out home, said as he watched firefighters spraying water through the second-floor roof of the residence.
Hinchey said he heard the blast and then saw a mail carrier exiting the driveway “at a high rate of speed, and I knew something was wrong.” The house was “fully engulfed,” Hinchey said, adding, “I came over and checked the house to make sure they weren’t in it. … I saw that the two cars were missing. … We were keeping our fingers crossed.”
Homeowner Debbie Lawrence said she and her husband John Brink, who built the two-story wood-shingled home in 1990, were not at home when the fire started. Lawrence speculated that an exploding gas fireplace caused the blaze, and said the fireplace was not in use when it exploded. “The pilot was off. Everything was off,” she said. “It’s scary.”
The family’s two cats remained unaccounted for at about 2 p.m. Lawrence said the cats were in the basement and could have survived the fire.
The couple will rebuild the structure, but it will be a lot smaller than the home that burned, she said.
“We’ll probably build something but it won’t be like that. We had a lot of kids, now it’s just John and I. I wanted to sell it for years and my husband didn’t want to sell it.” Lawrence said
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