Charles Sargent moved into the sun room of his Northfield home, confining himself to the only area of his house untouched by fire.
Pink insulation still curls around the gashes in his walls, like a scab forming over a wound. Bed sheets stretch over the windows to keep the intrusion of sunlight at bay. In the dead of winter, the detritus of his life — stacked dishes, an amber vase, a ceramic pitcher used as a receptacle for kitchen utensils — sits outside wedged in snow.
On the last morning of January, a blaze tore through Sargent’s single-story residence on Hodgdon Road, consuming part of the ceiling and coating the home in soot.
In spite of the Tilton-Northfield Fire Department’s determination that the structure is a total loss, Sargent insists that he won’t leave it behind, that the damage is “fixable.” He’s only thankful the fire didn’t claim any lives, an affirmative statement he wasn’t sure he would be able to make.
“There are certain things that are important in life, and there are things that are less important,” he said. “Houses — believe me, it sucks now looking at work that I did years ago the way that it is […] It’s very disturbing, but it’s not important.”
The fire was extinguished by 9 in the morning on Saturday, Jan. 31, and from the moment he was let back inside at 10 a.m. until late in the evening, Sargent searched for the body of one of his long-haired chihuahuas. He picked up “every piece of whatever off the floor,” knowing that, at only three months old, Riot would have come running to him if she had been buried under the debris.
Despair turned to joy when a friend, who Sargent regularly drives to Circle K and Dollar Tree, joined him for errands and handed him the lost dog, alive and well.
“As soon as I had her in my hand, I realized it was Riot because she immediately just started in on me, licking at my hand, totally rambunctious,” he said. “I was very, very relieved.”
Sargent, who works in construction, has run an informal breeding operation with his daughter out of their home for more than 15 years. In early days, the unlicensed business was named ‘Noah’s Ark,’ in part because it handled chinchillas, goats, birds and a variety of other animals.
Now Sargent cares for 10 long-haired chihuahuas of different ages. With only one reproductive male, a dog named Yeti, Sargent said the dogs “free breed.” None suffered serious injuries in the fire, and Sargent was able to pick them up from the Birch Hill Pet Resort.
He wasn’t home when the fire broke out — Sargent struggles with recurring pneumonia and was undergoing a battery of medical exams at Concord Hospital in Laconia.
When crews with the Tilton-Northfield and Franklin fire departments arrived at his residence, they struggled to gain access because of the narrow, 200-foot path that separated their engine from the house. Finally deploying a leader-line hose to reach the home, they knocked down the blaze using hand tools and a chainsaw to open the ceiling.
Fire Chief Sean Valovanie’s assessment at the scene indicated that the fire had originated within the wall where the chimney connected to the wood stove in Sargent’s basement.
A few days later, Sargent visited the fire department to share his suspicions that the fire had resulted from a deliberate act of arson intended to cover up an attempt to steal one of his dogs. The fire department relayed his statement to the New Hampshire Fire Marshal and the town’s police department, according to Valovanie.
Despite Valovanie’s warnings about the health risks posed by soot and other products of combustion, Sargent said he’s carrying on in his home of 25 years.
Earlier this week, he drove a group of acquaintances to the New Season Treatment Center, a methadone clinic in Franklin, as he often does. That same morning, he visited one of his daughters, who was recently released from jail to a rehabilitation facility.
He’s building a kitchenette in the sun room with whichever appliances survived the fire: a hot plate, a toaster oven, a microwave. And he sleeps each night on a mattress on the floor with the ten long-haired chihuahuas at his feet, happy to be safely reunited with the dogs after their stay at the pet resort. “I could tell they were stressed being in a strange place without me,” he said.
The fire at Sargent’s home was the Tilton-Northfield Fire Department’s third wood stove-related fire this heating season. Sargent said he’s returned to using a wood-burning stove to heat the sun room and has no reservations about doing so. He feels reassured in his belief that the fire resulted from actions that were “either incredibly stupid or intentional.”
He’s focused on rebuilding, but the cold hasn’t helped.
Once the layer of ice covering the inside of his home thaws, Sargent plans to pressure wash the highly carcinogenic soot away before he begins making repairs. Rebuilding a badly burned wall will require a dozen new studs; he’ll replace the roof and install a new tongue-and-groove pine ceiling.
His decades of construction work give him the confidence to move forward.
“That’s what I do, I build.”