No one was injured in the fire, which engulfed the white clapboard house at 25 Buckfield Lane shortly after the 2:45 a.m. 911 call the property's caretaker made, Acting Fire Marshal James McDonald said.
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The kitchen area of the home, where investigators believe the fire started, completely collapsed, and lay in a pile of blackened wood and metal yesterday. In the parts of the house still standing, large piles of furniture and other objects could be seen through broken windows.
The six workers appeared to be living in the home, though much of the house was being used as storage rather than living space, McDonald said. The property has several buildings on it, including a larger and newer mansion behind the house destroyed yesterday.
The owner of the property was not home during the fire, McDonald said. Town records list 25 Buckfield Lane and an adjacent property as being owned by Smokey Hill Farms LLC, and neighbors identified the owner as Magnus Lindholm, a Swedish shipping executive and real estate developer. His home phone number was out of service yesterday, and calls to a Vail, Colo., real estate development firm Lindholm heads were not returned.
More than 45 career and volunteer firefighters from six stations responded to the fire, including the North Street fire house, which arrived first to find the house already in flames.
Firefighters connected hoses to reach water from a pond that was 1,500 feet away to battle the fire, Fire Chief Peter Siecienski said. "Water wasn't an issue, but it was an inconvenience to set up a drawing operation like that," Siecienski said.
Neighbors worried that windblown cinders would spread the fire, said 12-year-old Olivia Brodsky, who lives at 22 Buckfield Lane and watched the fire.
"We felt it was going to catch onto trees and go to the other properties, but luckily it didn't," Brodsky said.
Yesterday, McDonald and other fire inspectors along with Police Detective Christy Girard sifted through the charred home looking for clues to the cause, following the department's usual procedure to preserve potential criminal evidence if necessary, McDonald said. A dog from the State Fire Marshal's Office was used to determine whether any accelerants could be identified at the scene, but the animal found nothing yesterday, McDonald said.
The Greenwich chapter of the American Red Cross has put up the six occupants of the home in a Stamford hotel through the next two nights, and case workers will assist them in finding a new home and to replace belongings, said Tim Wall, director of Disaster and Emergency Services.
"They've lost everything," Wall said.
Attempts to reach the six workers who lived at the home yesterday were unsuccessful.
