Fire destroyed a home in Moodus early Friday morning and the fire marshal and state police are investigating the cause.
Firefighters responded just after 2:30 a.m. and the fire was under control by around 4 a.m.
No one was hurt. The person who lives on the second floor was able to escape, according to state police. The house has catastrophic damage and is uninhabitable, according to police.
A “for sale” is up outside the Falls Road and the homeowner said a person who has been living in the house hasn’t paid rent for the last six months and he threatened to burn the house down when eviction papers were served two days earlier.
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“We've been trying to get him evicted. And he threatened my husband that he was gonna burn the house down. And he's been living there for six months, not paying anything. But with the way the state is because of COVID we couldn't evict him,” Cindy Mellor, who owns the house, said.
She said she never imagined her home would actually burn down.
The fire chief said he did not know anything about a dispute and NBC Connecticut has not been able to speak to the person who was living in the house.
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Stephen Stankowski lives directly across the street, woke up to see bright light, looked outside and saw the flames.
He called 911, then he grabbed his garden hose.
“I started spraying the side of the house and the roof and everything because I was afraid of my house catching on fire,” he said. “It was terrifying, I was scared. I didn’t know what to do. It caught so quickly and went out of hand that fast,” Stankowski said.
Mellor said she learned the property was on fire when she got a call around 3 a.m. and said she was shocked.
She said a person wanted to buy the house has property in there.
Officials said no one was injured in the fire.
The fire department was trucking in water from the nearby Moodus reservoir to put out the flames.
The fire chief said the home is a total loss. There is extensive damage on the top floor and fire and water damage to the main floor.
The East Haddam fire marshal’s office and from the Connecticut State Police Fire & Explosion Investigation Unit are investigating the fire.
