Blaze strikes borough house

A Hightstown family is forced to relocate after its house catches fire.

By: Scott Morgan
   HIGHTSTOWN — Just before 2:45 p.m. Monday, Gayle Wilton heard a voice over the baby monitor that didn’t belong to her 18-month-old daughter.
   "There’s someone in our house," she told her husband, Art, who left their basement office to check it out.
   A moment later, Mr. Wilton screamed for his wife to get out of the house because the back end of it was on fire. The voice, it turned out, belonged to Patrolman Frank Gendron who, after receiving a call from fellow Patrolman Todd Galla (who discovered the fire while driving past) entered the house to look for occupants.
   As Mrs. Wilton and a visiting friend ran for the basement exit, Mr. Wilton scurried to the second floor to grab his sleeping daughter.
   "We didn’t know anything, we didn’t see anything, we didn’t feel anything," Mrs. Wilton said. At least not until they had made it outside and watched the clutch of fire crews douse their burning Stockton Street home.
   Within 30 minutes, said Borough Fire Chief John Archer, fire crews from Hightstown, East Windsor, Washington, Cranbury and West Windsor had squelched the blaze, containing it in the first-floor rear of the house. Though the kitchen, the back porch, the dining room and the black Dodge Durango parked in the driveway were destroyed, the majority of the house had survived, thanks largely to what Chief Archer called a "textbook thing to see" by the fire crews. "It was one of the best fire stops I’ve seen in a long time," he said.
   It was a fire that though short-lived, was damaging enough to exact its toll — wedding photos lost; souvenirs from Europe gone; antique furniture (a gift from Mrs. Wilton’s grandmother) possibly ruined beyond repair.
   But those, Mrs. Wilton said, are just things. Maybe not replaceable, but still just things.
   "The important thing," Mrs. Wilton said, "is that we’re all here." That includes the family, their friend, their dog and even their fish, which was "a little smoky, but he was swimming around in his bowl."
   Monetarily, no one has yet determined the price tag of the fire, though Chief Archer said the damage likely will render the house uninhabitable for several months. More than just fire damage, the chief said, the house suffered severe heat damage. The house, which is old and made mostly of stone and brick, conducted heat "like an oven," Chief Archer said.
   In the meantime, Mrs. Wilton said the family will stay with friends and relatives, but, she added, they will return to their home when it’s repaired.
   Because they are not leaving the borough permanently, Mr. Wilton, a Republican candidate for Borough Council this year, will retain his eligibility to run in the June primary.
   Mrs. Wilton said also that their business, Third Floor Communications, will go on, if with some difficulty.
   Chief Archer said Mercer County fire investigators determined the blaze began on the back porch, likely due to "a carelessly discarded cigarette." According to the chief, the likely series of events was that a partially lit cigarette had been placed in a plastic planter pot, which caught fire and ignited the wooden porch. From there, Chief Archer said, the fire probably touched off items in the recycle bin beneath the porch, eventually igniting the Durango and part of the garage.
   Mrs. Wilton, however, does not entirely believe the official word. She said that though people do smoke when in her home, no one had been smoking for several hours. Mr. Wilton does smoke, but he always snuffs his cigarettes before disposing of them, she said. Mrs. Wilton suggested the fire could have been the result of spontaneous combustion in the pile of old leaves beneath the porch — an explanation she said others have suggested as well.
   The chief’s explanation, she said "kind of makes it seem that we’ve done something wrong."
   But Chief Archer said the fire was determined "a true accident," and that no criminal charges will be filed.
Monetary donations for the Wilton family will be accepted through the Sun National Bank, 140 Mercer St. For more information, contact Branch Manager Eva Teller at 918-1283. Better Beginnings volunteer Kerrie Peterson suggests area residents consider donating proceeds from the upcoming borough-wide garage sale to the Wiltons; contact Eva Teller for that as well. And, donations of goods are being collected by Beth El Synagogue, 50 Maple Stream Road. For more information, call Jen Cannon at 443-4454.