MANCHESTER — Twelve hours after a fire destroyed a home on Belgrade Road Sunday, the Manchester Fire Department returned to the home after neighbors reported the fire had reignited.
Debbie Bickford, who lives diagonally across from the home at 114 Belgrade Road, said she called 911 after her niece told her she could see smoke and flames at the burned home.
Bickford, who had been up since flashing emergency lights awakened her before 4 a.m., said the Sanborn family was able to get out of the burning house with their pets after a dog woke them up.
“She (Allison Sanborn) was just telling me she had replaced the batteries in their smoke alarms,” Bickford said. Carly Bagley, who lives next door to the house that burned, said he was awakened by his dog and heard voices outside before he realized his neighbors’ home was on fire and that the structure was fully involved.
As firefighters attacked flames at one side of the house, Bickford said, she saw flames come out the other side.
Fire departments in the Lakes Region Mutual Aid group were on scene initially until about 11 a.m.
Bagley said at one point, firefighters brought in an excavator to knock down part of the home to attack the fire.
Manchester property records show the single-story clapboard Cape-style home is owned by Kevin and Allison Sanborn.
Neighbors say they have lived there for about a dozen years with their two sons.
“I grew up in that house,” Bickford said, as she and other neighbors watched Manchester firefighters investigate the hot spots. “My parents bought it in 1959, when I was 1 1/2 years old, and there are a lot of memories in that house.”
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