‘I don’t know what I’m going to do’: One dead in Boscawen house fire

Marc Richards was sleeping on the first floor of his friend’s home when his wife suddenly woke him up. At first, he said he saw nothing.

“Then other people came running in,” he said. “They told us the house was on fire and then it all filled with smoke.”

The couple was visiting Gary Bailey, 48, who lives in the home at 14 Gage St. that his family owns.

Flames engulfed the two-story Boscawen home around 9:30 p.m. Monday, killing an elderly man who was asleep on the second floor.

Bailey identified the deceased man as his friend, Ron Fowler, whom he estimated was in his seventies.

Bailey said he had known Fowler for 15 to 20 years and that Fowler had lived in the home for about five years.

“He’s a really good guy,” Bailey said.

Firefighters from Concord’s Station Five in Penacook were the first on scene and they performed what Boscawen Fire Chief Tim Kenney described as an exceedingly challenging rescue. After attempting to enter the house through a second-floor window, they had to retreat. Along with another Concord crew, they then executed the rescue on the second attempt.

“The sheer effort by the city of Concord firefighters who arrived first was just extraordinary,” said Kenney, who noted rescues of missing individuals are quite rare.

Emergency responders attempted CPR on Fowler before declaring him deceased.

Bailey, Richards, and his wife all escaped the blaze, along with three of their dogs. A fourth dog could not be located and was presumed dead.

For Bailey, who has lived in the house for 35 years, the fire was a tragedy on top of a tragedy. His mother passed away last month.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” Bailey said through tears, as he sat on a neighbor’s lawn in sub-freezing temperatures. “I don’t know where I’m going to live.”

Bailey and Richards said they smelled plastic burning and then saw an eruption of flames. They did not know what had caused the fire.

“People don’t know how fast it goes,” Richards said.

Kenney said his “best guess” was that the fire began in the adjoining garage, but he said the Office of the State Fire Marshal was still investigating.

When Kenney arrived, he said he was surprised at how far the fire had already spread.

“Just the sheer volume of fire was incredible – just to have that much of a head start,” he said.

The fire gutted the house and garage. An hour after the fire started, smoke continued to billow from the second-floor garage where Fowler’s body had been recovered.

This was the first fatal fire in Boscawen in several years, Kenney said. In 2025, the state has experienced 14 other fire-related deaths, according to Tyler Dumont, the strategic communications administrator for the Department of Safety.

In addition to fire crews from Boscawen, Concord, emergency responders from surrounding towns, including Loudon, Salisbury, Bow, Chichester, Warner, and Hopkinton, responded. Penacook Rescue Squad was also on scene.

Boscawen’s fire department responded to a second fire early Tuesday morning at Canterbury House, a sober living home at 109 High St.

Kenney said he was still on scene at the Gage Street fire when he received the call at around 3 a.m.

An e-bicycle in the kitchen area of the house had caught fire, filling one of the two floors with smoke. There were no injuries, Kenney said, but the smoke and water damage rendered the floor uninhabitable.

Nine people were staying in the dormitory-style home at the time of the fire, Kenney said.