WILMINGTON- No one was injured in an early evening house fire on Whitney Lane that robbed one family of their possessions, and left another tenant homeless.


Thanks to a quick response from the Wilmington Fire Department and other local departments, fire damage was limited to one room in the house. “I could see it from the firehouse and upgraded to a second alarm,” said Wilmington’s acting fire chief Richard Covey. “We had Whitingham and West Dover on the scene.”


The house belonged to Janet and Bucky Boyd, of Wilmington. Their daughter-in-law Melissa, son DJ Boyd, and grandchildren Logan, Ryan, and Izabella, were living on the main floor where the fire started. Melissa Boyd was home at the time of the fire with two of the children. She had just taken a phone call from a family member when she smelled smoke and walked into the living room in time to see flames climbing the curtains. “She told her sister ‘I have to go, the curtains are on fire,’ says Janet Boyd.


Melissa Boyd left the house with her two children, and nothing else. She walked to neighbor Anne Manwaring’s house, who called 911 for her, and notified Mount Snow, where DJ Boyd was working as a night trail groomer, to send him home.


Firefighters were on the scene within a matter of minutes, and quickly extinguished the flames. Although most of the structure was saved, Covey says there was substantial interior damage from smoke and intense heat. “Everything five feet down from the ceiling was destroyed by the heat,” he says.


Although the damage wasn’t as severe as it could have been, the family still lost all of their possessions – clothing, furniture, and all their other household goods. The children also lost their Christmas gifts left by Santa, but some of their gifts from family were still at their grandparents’ house, waiting to go home. Janet Boyd says firefighters found some toys melted – in particular a fire engine toy that had melted into a pool of plastic. Boyd says the lights and siren were still working – blinking and blaring out of the flattened toy.


Melissa and DJ Boyd were preparing to move into a new house – still under construction in Wilmington. The fire prompted an earlier-than-expected move to the nearly finished house. Covey said some of their possessions were packed in plastic totes at the apartment, ready to go. Now they’re encased in melted plastic totes. “They lost everything,” Janet Boyd says. “DJ said the one bright spot was that it was going to make moving really easy.”


But despite all the loss, Boyd says the family feels lucky that no one was hurt, and that it didn’t happen when the family was asleep. “We really were so lucky,” she says. Left with nothing but the clothes on their backs, the family has already started to replace some of their things – clothes to wear to work and something other than spackle buckets to sit on – with help from relatives. “I know we’d never replace things any cheaper than we could this weekend with all the sales,” Boyd says. “We looked like we had survived the wreck of the Hesperus. I don’t know what people do when they’re all alone – with no insurance and no family to help.”


A few of the family’s mementos were saved by firefighters, Boyd notes. As they were entering the house, firefighters noticed a cache of family photos and other memorabilia in a corner where Melissa Boyd keeps her scrap-booking paraphernalia. They took the objects outside and rolled them in a tarp for safekeeping. “That was such a thoughtful thing to do,” says Janet Boyd There was no one home in the downstairs apartment at the time of the fire, and the apartment wasn’t damaged by flames. But Boyd says the apartment received substantial water damage. The good news, she says, is that the downstairs tenant had little property damage. “Firefighters kicked in the door, moved all of his belongings into the middle of the room, and covered them with a tarp so they wouldn’t get water damage,” she says, “which is amazing. He was such a great tenant, we’ll miss him.”


No official cause has been established for the fire, but Boyd says it appears to have started near the family’s television and entertainment center. In informal discussions with fire officials, she says, it appears that the fire may have been caused by a malfunctioning electronic component.


Boyd says the house was insured, and they plan to rebuild it. “It was a nice two-family house off the beaten track,” says Boyd – who is a real estate agent. “They’re saying it can be rebuilt, so now we’ll just have to see what happens. It will mean some business for an electrician, for WW (building supply), and a carpenter, but it’s better than paying a funeral home.”