WILDER - Neighbors spotted flames and smoke rolling from the windows of a single family house on South Street first thing Friday morning and began frantically pounding on the front door, waking the occupants and enabling them to escape just in the nick of time.
Eric Levakis, 49, narrowly made it out of a second story window onto a porch roof and jumped to safety, while his daughter Alonnah, 21, and her boyfriend Justin Woodward, 23, awoke to find their first floor bedroom filled with smoke before they too made it outside.
“Smoke detectors, smoke detectors, smoke detectors!,” a Hartford fire officer said in the wake of the fire. “There were no working smoke detectors in the house so this came really close to being a fatal fire,” he noted.
The smoke did kill two of the family’s three dogs while doing substantial damage to the interior of both floors of the small home, but the structure was still standing by the time crews from Hartford, Lebanon, Hanover and Windsor were able to declare the two-alarm fire under control.
Alonnah Levakis and her boyfriend Justin Woodward watched the firefighting effort with their lone surviving dog, 12-year-old Angel, after they escaped the fire after being awakened by a neighbor. All photos © Eric Francis.
“We had someone banging on the door saying the house was on fire,” Alonnah Levakis recalled. “I heard ‘FIRE’ and I could smell the smoke but I couldn’t see anything. It was really scary. I don’t think we would have woke up honestly if they hadn’t done that. I got out and walked over to the side of the house and there was fire coming out of the windows and the smoke was just crazy.”
Levakis said firefighters told her it looked like the fire originated somewhere in or near the kitchen, but she said, “I don’t think anything like the dryer or the stove was even on.”
“It’s really hard to hold it together right now,” Levakis said. “I’ve lived here my whole life with my dad and he’s lived here since he was 8 or so. This isn’t what I was expecting to wake up to. You see (fires on the news) all around but you never expect it to be you.”
The family’s oldest dog, Angel, who is 12, made it out, but Levakis said the others were overcome by the smoke. “Apollo was 2 and Buttercup was 6,” Levakis explained. After firefighters brought the situation under control, she said, “I walked over and said my goodbyes to the dogs and (Angel) smelt them. Apollo was just a baby. It was so sad.”
Standing amidst all the emergency vehicles lining South Street Friday morning, Levakis added, “I was really shocked how fast they got here. They definitely saved a lot of things inside.”
Hartford Firefighter Gabrielle Poole repacks large diameter supply hose onto a Lebanon fire engine.
The first responder to arrive on the scene was actually Lebanon Fire Chief James Wheatley, who lives nearby. “There was fire and smoke out the kitchen window and heavy fire from the two windows above it on the second floor, but the occupants were already out,” the chief recalled.
Engines from Lebanon Station Two in West Lebanon and Hartford’s Station One arrived simultaneously after the initial alarm was struck at 7:24 a.m. Friday. The fire was upgraded to a second alarm at 7:37 a.m. and then declared under control about ten minutes later.
Firefighters washed smoke and soot off their self-contained breathing air bottles after the two-alarm blaze was extinguished.
Eric Levakis was transported to the hospital in an ambulance because of smoke inhalation, but officials at the scene said he did not appear to be seriously injured.
Levakis runs Victory Cleaning and an associated lawn mowing business from his house, which sits midway down a quiet neighborhood street that runs roughly behind and below the Cumberland Farms store on Hartford Avenue in Wilder.
Investigators said it did appear that the fire began somewhere in the kitchen and dining room area on the first floor of the home, but they said they were still working to pinpoint the exact cause and origin of the blaze. They returned to the scene on Monday to continue their work.
Eric Francis is a veteran Upper Valley freelancer, covering crime, fires, natural disasters, and the occasional rabid bobcat.
