Plumbing business goes up in flames
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Toolbox
By Cristina Kumka Herald Staff - Published: January 20, 2009
Robert Beardmore, a firefighter in Shrewsbury and Mount Holly for the past 20 years, was eating breakfast with his comrades at the Over Easy Restaurant in Cuttingsville Saturday morning, minutes before the unexpected happened, he said.
"I came over the bridge and I saw the barn burning," Beardmore said Monday.
But it wasn't just any barn — it was his own.
Beardmore sprang into action with about 60 firefighters, many of whom he had just eaten a meal with, to battle the blaze that was ripping through the 1853 barn he turned into a workshop for his plumbing and heating business 17 years ago.
The barn, behind the office of Beardmore's company Master Plumbing and Heating Inc. at 5190 Route 103, was declared a "total loss" after firefighters from five neighboring municipalities with six pumpers and 10 tankers fought the blaze for three hours beginning at 6:44 a.m., according to Shrewsbury Fire Chief Kevin Brown.
A portion of Route 103 was closed to traffic for 30 minutes as firefighters battled the "huge" blaze, Brown said.
No one was injured, but $250,000 worth of supplies and other inventory was destroyed, Beardmore said.
"It was our… everything we had," he said.
Although the cause of the fire is still under investigation, Brown said it appeared to be electrical.
Beardmore said he believes battery chargers, in the process of powering up portable radios, overheated sometime that morning.
The Shrewsbury resident and multiple business owner said he'll pick up the pieces and rebuild his business from the ground up, with the help of friends.
Beardmore said he'll operate the plumbing business out of a storage facility in Ludlow until the insurance company clears him to tear down the remainder of the barn and put up a new structure.
He said he'll do things a little differently next time.
"Put a fire alarm system in … something that calls the fire alarm company," Beardmore said. "That's the best protection you could get."
Contact Cristina Kumka at cristina.kumka@rutlandherald.com.
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