By Eileen Oldfield, Staff Writer
The Somerset County Prosecutor’s Office has not released any additional information about a Monday structure fire that destroyed an Orchard Drive house, citing an ongoing investigation into the blaze.
Neighbors said they noticed the fire and called 9-1-1 around 8 p.m., though the structure was already engulfed in flames by then. The house, located across from the South Branch Bible Fellowship, is reported to be from the 1860s, and was unoccupied when the fire broke out.
”We were alerted by really loud popping sounds,” said Ken Holick, who lives next to the burned house with his wife, Denise. “What we didn’t realize then is that was the windows popping from the heat. As soon as we heard that, we looked out our back windows and saw the fireball.”
”In all of those films were they have flames coming out of the windows, that’s exactly what that was like,” he added.
Neighbors said the current owner, whose name they did not know, bought the house a year ago and was in the process of renovating it. The fire put an end to any work on the house only charred electrical equipment, the blackened bricks, and burned wood surround the pit that was the house’s basement now.
The fire department did not evacuate any of the surrounding houses, though the residents said they had already left their homes and in some cases, moved cars when the engines arrived.
Other residents reported spraying the barns next to their houses to prevent those structures from catching any errant embers.
”As quick as I was spraying it, it was evaporating,” Mr. Holick said.
The house collapsed soon after the fire departments arrived, neighbors said. Fire crews remained at the site until at least 1 a.m. Tuesday, and a Hillsborough Police patrol car remained at there overnight, they added.
”I looked out and it was just one big column of flame,” said one neighbor who did not identify himself, describing the blaze.

