A three-alarm fire at Patenaude Lumber Co. in Henniker on Wednesday evening reduced the main building to blackened rubble in minutes but left no injuries and took no lives.
Firefighers work to contain a fire at Patenaude Lumber Mill on Rush Road in Henniker. Credit: Jay Heath 
Firefighers work to contain a fire at Patenaude Lumber Mill on Rush Road in Henniker. Credit: Jay Heath 
Firefighers work to contain a fire at Patenaude Lumber Mill on Rush Road in Henniker. Credit: Jay Heath
The first call came in around 5 p.m. and by 7:30 p.m., piles of charred metal had begun to mount along the perimeter of the structure, raked together by the claw of an excavator. Crews lifted empty propane tanks from the remnants of the building, tanks that firefighters had left to vent to avoid a potential explosion.
“It’s better to see the flame and know where the gas is,” explained Guy Newbery, the deputy chief coordinator of the Capital Area Mutual Aid Fire Compact, which responded to the fire.
One individual was treated for smoke inhalation, but did not need to be transported to the hospital, Newbery said.
A contained fire remained in the center of the rubble, and small embers smouldered, extinguishing and relighting, at the tops of several towering posts. When Chief Coordinator Keith Gilbert arrived, the scene was vastly different.
“When I arrived, half the building was on fire,” he said. “The crews were using a forklift or a loader to remove equipment from inside.”
Gilbert crouched under hood of the command center, a wash of red lights blinked behind him and a radio hummed in his grip.
A bitter smell of rubber cut through the air, still humid from a storm front that brought high winds and torrential rains to central New Hampshire just minutes earlier. Although the cause of the fire has not yet been determined, Gilbert suspects the storm precipitated the blaze by knocking trees onto power lines.
He pointed at a broken trunk in the treeline and a bundle of wires beneath it.
“My initial impression is that the tree fell on the wires,” he said. “There’s nothing unusual about them, but anytime you take live wires and touch them to the ground, there’s some risk they’ll spark.”
Gilbert said the building had not operated as a saw mill for a couple of years but had continued housing businesses. Non-emergency vehicles on the property displayed signs for American Guadian Septic Services and Keim Landscaping Consulting.
Property records show the building is owned by Patenaude Lumber Co.
Bradford, Bow, Henniker, Hopkinton, Dunbarton, Weare, Warner, Deering and Antrim fire departments assisted at the scene.
