KINGSTON n Retired Kingston firefighter Bernard Sampson had seen the situation countless times in his 33 years on the job — a house filled with thick black smoke, a fire unseen. He would have trusted no one more than his brothers on the Fire Department to save his home and his memories.
An oil burner malfunctioned and started a fire in the basement of Sampson’s home at 15 Pilgrims St. Wednesday. The fire was contained to the basement but smoke filled the two-story house, leaving it uninhabitable.
Kristen Sampson, Sampson’s daughter-in-law, stopped by the house Wednesday afternoon, opened the front door and a cloud of thick black smoke bellowed out. She slammed the door and ran to her car but her cell phone was dead so she ran to a neighbor’s house and dialed 911, she said.
“It was fate that made her go over there at that particular time, it would not have been long from then that the whole house would have ignited,” Bernard Sampson said.
He left for work at 7:30 a.m. Wednesday and said the fire must have been going for several hours. When he got the call that his house was filled with smoke, his boss at Merck Medical Response in Dedham thought it would be best to drive him there in one of the company’s ambulances. Sampson’s wife Marlene died in August, and his boss thought the possibility of losing all of the memories that the house holds would affect the retired firefighter’s ability to drive.
Sampson said he and his boss listened to the police scanner on their way to Kingston as firefighters assessed the situation. “We’re off with heavy smoke showing,” they heard over the scanner. Sampson said he grew more nervous as they drove closer to his house.
The fire started when oil continued to pump into the combustion chamber of the furnace instead of going up the chimney which had become blocked with soot, Kingston Deputy Fire Chief Mark Douglas said.
Soot covered everything inside the house. It will be uninhabitable until the oil burner is replaced, everything inside has been cleaned and the air quality improves, Douglas said. Sampson will stay with Kristen and his son Todd Sampson in their Kingston home until his is repaired.
“It happens in a lot of places, it’s just kind of a freak thing,” Douglas said of the malfunction. He estimated the damage to the house to be well more than $10,000.
The basement fire was knocked down 23 minutes after engines arrived, but Kingston Fire Department was on the scene until 3:12 p.m. clearing the smoke and soot.
