All photos © Eric Francis
— Lebanon, NH
A small office building in the Wheeler Professional Park a couple of minutes south of downtown Hanover was completely destroyed by fire in the middle of the night.
The fire was spotted by a passing snowplow driver shortly before 4:30 a.m. Wednesday and quickly went to a second alarm as firefighters from Lebanon, Hanover, Hartford, Norwich, and Windsor responded directly to the scene, which sits just across the road from Sachem Field and the Campion Ice Rink.
“We had fire on both floors from end-to-end. The building was fully involved when we got here so we really went into a defensive operation because it was too risky to send anyone inside,” Lebanon Fire Chief James Wheatley recalled at the scene.
The burning building was one of a cluster of three nearly identical small office buildings that face onto North Main Street opposite the Wellspring Worship Center, but their address is technically on Oak Ridge Road.
The building that was destroyed used to house a dental office but the chief noted, “We are trying to get in touch with the property owners and find out exactly what was in there now. There’s nothing suspicious at this point but we won’t know more until we dig into it later on today.”
The fire was declared under control at 6 a.m.
