Horses, Historic Barn in N.Y. Saved From Fire

April 27--CHAZY -- Bethann Caston knew there were horses inside the burning barn, somewhere behind the roiling, black smoke.

"They were real quiet," she said. "It scared me."

She'd arrived at the William H. Miner Agricultural Research Institute a little early Thursday morning, expecting to feed and care for the calves as usual. But there was smoke billowing from the chimneys atop the horse barn, and her day entered crisis mode.

Joe Poissant and Mark Dubrey, two correction officers driving to work together at Altona Correctional Facility, saw the smoke, too.

"We pulled in really fast," Poissant said.

While Caston called 911, the two Chazy men tried to get inside.

They could hear the horses, neighing.

"We were holding our breath, couldn't see," Poissant said.

But the smoke was too thick.

He and Dubrey rushed to a door near the center of the barn. They saw no flames, felt no heat, but hesitated -- as correction officers, they have some fire training, and an open door can burst a fire wide open.

But the horses were whinnying.

"If they were going to die," flitted a thought through Poissant's mind, "they were going to die with us doing something" to save them.

HEADS HUNG LOW

They opened the door, and the fire was right there.

Dubrey searched for fire extinguishers, as Poissant groped his way inside, thinking he might find the horses's stalls by feel and manage to open the doors.

He didn't realize the four animals were at the other end of the barn, and Caston had called farm worker Ralph LaBombard to help her get them to safety.

They found them in their stalls, heads hung low to breathe the cleaner air near the floor, Caston said.

The horses didn't panic.

She and LaBombard let the two mares and stud colt loose and they left the barn on their own.

As for Vern, the stallion, "we just put a halter on him, and I led him to the ring where he usually goes out to eat."

TASK FORCE CANCELED

At the source of the fire, Poissant and Dubrey took turns with the fire extinguishers, spraying the flames creeping up the side of a stall.

And then Chazy Volunteer Fire Department was there, taking over with the help of a West Chazy crew.

With all the smoke, said Chazy Chief Mike Cahoon, they had summoned a task force to tackle what looked to be a major conflagration.

But Dubrey and Poissant, he said, "did a phenomenal job."

There was still fire showing, the chief said.

"It had got up to the second floor, (but) we knocked that down pretty quick.

"It was a great job done by all."

No task force was needed.

OILY RAGS, SAWDUST

Spontaneous combustion of some construction debris started the blaze.

"The oil rags with the sawdust, they make a good combination for a fire," Cahoon said. "You've got to be careful with your stains and your varnishes and your oily rags."

Damage from the flames was minimal, he said.

"A lot of smoke damage," said Kirk Beattie, vice president of administrative finance for the institute, called the Miner Farm by locals.

"It was a great save," he said, praising Caston, LaBombard and the two correction officers, whose names he didn't know until later.

As noon neared, the burned rubber-type floor mat that had produced the thick smoke was removed, and workers were pressure-washing the walls. And a close eye would be kept on the structure to watch for possible rekindles, Beattie said.

'FOREVER GRATEFUL'

The horses, said Equine Manager Karen Lassell, seemed to be doing fine.

The yearling stud colt, Ferrous, had a small cut on one leg. Neither Vern nor a mare named Hallie, a show horse, showed ill effects from the smoke.

And Boo, a mare due to foal anytime now, "seems to be all right," Lassell said. "We'll be watching them all the next few days."

No one doubted that the quick action likely saved the barn from destruction and possibly the horses from death.

"I'm forever grateful," she said.

HISTORIC BARN

The horse barn holds a place in local history, as the original dairy barn built in 1906 as part of William H. Miner's Hearts Delight Farm.

"It's one of our signature buildings," Beattie said. "It's irreplaceable.

"It's part of our community, the Miner Farm," Poissant said.

Miner was a philanthropist who built the first Chazy Central Rural School, Physician's Hospital in Plattsburgh and brought many innovations to the rural area of the North Country.

Chazy schoolchildren know of his beneficence from an early age, and Poissant was one of them.

"You think about it after," he mused. It felt good to kind of be paying it forward, "about doing something nice."

He and Dubrey returned home, changed their smoky clothes then went to work.

Caston was treated at CVPH Medical Center for some smoke inhalation but insisted later she was OK.

"It's not what you expect on a morning, getting to work," Beattie said.

"Don't want one of those days every day," Caston said.

Email Suzanne Moore at: [email protected]

Copyright 2012 - The Press-Republican, Plattsburgh, N.Y.