Firefighters from Harvard, Littleton, Bolton, and Boxborough pose in front of the fully engulfed structure. (Courtesy photo by Deb Barton)  MORE PHOTOS

As flames burst through shattered windows and then engulfed the roof of a Stow Road residence, members of the Harvard Fire Department watched attentively, hoses at the ready. But they made no effort to douse the flames—only to prevent their spread beyond the house itself. They were not trying to put out the fire for the very good reason that they had worked hard to get it started.

The Harvard firefighters—joined by teams from Littleton, Bolton, and Boxborough—were taking advantage of a rare opportunity to practice a range of scenarios in a burning building under controlled circumstances. Fire Chief Donald Hurme explained that the daylong exercises on Saturday, May 28, would give firefighters from all four towns a chance to practice together. The towns have a mutual aid agreement, which makes it important for them to be familiar with one another's ways of working.

The house, a contemporary built in the 1980s, had stood empty for some time and was deemed uninhabitable. Volunteer fireman Bill Barton, who lives next door, purchased the property for the land and offered the structure for the Fire Department's use.

On a walk-through of the house before the exercises began, Hurme pointed out some of the dangers firefighters face in a complex, multilevel contemporary residence. They approach a fire like a military operation, he explained, identifying the front of the house as the alpha side. The next side, moving clockwise, is the beta side, and so on. A firefighter inside the house could report his position, for example, as on the delta side, second level. But in a house like this one, with split levels and different staircases, a rescue team would have a hard time finding a trapped firefighter.

Following the military model, Hurme was the incident commander. Deputy chief Scot Nogler was the operations officer. Greg Harrod served as a safety officer, as did Steele McCurdy of Littleton. Harvard’s newly appointed fire chief, Richard Sicard of Ashburnham, was present throughout the day.

Hurme noted that members of the Harvard Fire Department had spent several days at the house preparing it for the exercise. They removed carpets, furniture, and materials that might emit toxins when burned. They put plywood backing under the open-tread stairways, to keep the stairways from becoming "chimneys" that pulled fire upward. Over the high clerestory windows, they installed flaps that could be opened with ropes and pulleys from the ground outside, allowing smoke to vent when necessary.

Lieutenant Rob Warren watches the fire. (Courtesy photo by Paul Green)  MORE PHOTOS

About 9:30 a.m., the fire teams were ready to begin. They piled wooden pallets and straw in one of the first floor rooms. Firefighter Sean Murphy set them alight. Moments later, smoke began to seep through cracks around the windows. Then flames appeared behind the glass. A team of three or four Harvard firefighters, backed up by others helping with the hose, stood ready to charge inside on a signal from Hurme. Soon after the firefighters burst into the building, the thick brownish smoke changed to white steam, indicating that the fire was quenched.

Teams of firefighters from Littleton, Bolton, and Boxborough also participated fully in the exercises. Littleton’s ladder truck stood by the building, with firefighters sometimes scrambling up the long ladder as far as the roof ridge. Boxborough sent a tanker to the exercise, and Bolton sent both a tanker and a regular hose-and-pumper fire truck. Harvard brought all its trucks and its tanker; but it held two trucks in reserve at all times in case of a genuine emergency. (A call did come when a dump truck struck a utility pole on Ayer Road.)

Thirteen times Murphy lit fires in different parts of the house, from basement to bedrooms. Two of the scenarios involved rescuing a 250-pound dummy—a square-jawed fellow who looked like an L.L. Bean model. After his second rescue, the dummy spent the rest of the day on the ground, leaning back on his elbows as if he were relaxing at the beach, while everyone else went diligently on with the work.

When each team of firefighters finished an exercise, they reported to Harvard's EMT squad, who carried out all the duties they would have assumed in an actual fire emergency. EMTs checked heart rates and blood oxygen levels, among other vital indicators. Cartons of bottled water filled tables around the medical area, so that firefighters would not become dehydrated.

Work was briefly interrupted in the early afternoon, when a rain shower became a downpour and then a barrage of pea-sized hail. Onlookers in shorts, T-shirts, and tank tops found themselves first drenched and then frozen. But the storm passed quickly.

Around 3 p.m., the final fire was set. It spread from the lower rear corner of the house into a glass-enclosed sunspace, which must once have been one of the house's most prized features. One by one the windows burst, leaving the beams silhouetted against the orange flames that filled the room. From within the building came loud reports, like rifle shots; perhaps pieces of the handsome stone fireplace façade were exploding. Bit by bit, the outer walls began to collapse inward. At the front of the house, an overhanging bay on the second story fell with a crash, and flames filled the space behind it. Eventually, only two tall concrete-block chimney stacks remained standing. Soon, they too would be razed by cleanup crews and front-loaders that were already on site.

Longtime firefighter Duane Barber recalled that it had been about 15 years since the department had been able to have such a valuable and realistic exercise in Harvard. At that time, they had burned a house near Ayer Road, not far from the post office.

Chief Hurme called the exercise, “a very good opportunity to practice skills under controlled circumstances, but with a real fire. We don’t have that many house fires in town. This allows everyone to get some experience with the heat and helps them to keep their skills sharp.”