Thursday morning’s fire. Courtesy of Lebanon Fire Department.
LEBANON - Five students from Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business and two guests staying with them escaped unharmed when their residence caught fire during the early hours of Thursday morning.
All seven individuals managed to escape out the front door of the duplex that sits on the North Main Street section of Route 10, just a few dozen yards south of the town line with Hanover.
Dispatchers began receiving multiple 911 calls reporting a working fire just minutes before 3 a.m. Thursday, and when the first Lebanon fire truck reached the scene firefighters found the front porch and façade of the two-story residential building already engulfed in flames.
Firefighters from Hanover, Hartford, Canaan, Windsor, and Enfield, many of whom had already been out fighting a four-alarm fire in Canaan, NH on the same shift, responded to help Lebanon at 3 a.m. on Thursday morning. Photo © Eric Francis.
“Firefighters initiated a transitional attack, first knocking down the heavy exterior fire before deploying hose lines into the building to extinguish the remaining fire,” the Lebanon Fire Department said in a press release. The fire was declared under control less than an hour after firefighters arrived.
The building sits right in front of the Campion Ice Rink, although it not directly visible from the property due to a small stand of trees that sits directly behind the duplex, screening the larger facility from view.
Charred stuffed animals and a burnt computer sit on a desk in a first floor bedroom inside the burned duplex. Photo © Eric Francis.
Lindsey Walter, the Tuck School’s Chief Communications Officer said Thursday that the larger Tuck community had “quickly enacted support for the students.”
“We have secured temporary housing for the students and are working to identify longer-term housing options,” Walter said, adding “They have been provided with loaner laptops and fellow students wanting to help are already preparing care packages and organizing meal trains.”
Lebanon Assistant Fire Chief Jeff Libbey searched on his hands and knees Thursday morning looking for clues as to the origin of the fire, which appeared to have begun in the front porch area. Photo © Eric Francis.
Lebanon Assistant Chief Jeff Libbey said that the fire appeared to have been burning on the exterior front porch of the residence when it set off the building’s alarm system and the students, who’d all been asleep, began evacuating out the doors, noting in the moments they left that the fire had not yet penetrated inside the building.
While Libbey said it was not immediately clear on Thursday morning what might have started the blaze, he described the students as "extremely cooperative and helpful” and said they had given investigators detailed accounts and photos they had taken of the initial stages of the fire.
Eric Francis is a veteran Upper Valley freelancer, covering crime, fires, natural disasters, and the occasional rabid bobcat.
