200 year old home goes up in flames

BARRINGTON, RI (WPRI) - A 227 year old home goes up in flames. The homeowner watched as fire ripped through his home on Old River Road in Barrington, but fire crews were able to stop the flames before they destroyed the house.

By the time the first fire truck got to the 18th century house in Saturday morning, half the home was fully engulfed in flames.

"Well the old style dwellings, there's nothing to stop the fire, really from the basement all the way up to the attic, so we recognized that as soon as we arrived and that's the way we attacked the fire.", says Barrington Fire Chief Gerald Bessette.

No one was inside the home when the fire broke out, but the homeowner was trying to dry out some rotted wood around the windows with a heat gun right before it started.

“I guess the gentleman was doing some repair on one of the windows and he could hear crackling and obviously the heat gun he was using, but inside the wall and it just went right up the wall right into the attic."

Chief Bessette says two crews from East Providence and another two crews from Warren helped the firefighters from Barrington contain the flames.

He says their quick action prevented the home from burning to the ground, but the damage to the north end is still pretty severe.

"There's significant damage to that end, there's probably three or four rooms at that north end that will have to be totally gutted and replaced."

The fire is still under investigation, but fire officials believe the cause may have been the heat gun on the dry, old wood structure.