1

CAROL LOLLIS

Robert Kosior collects belongings he threw out his window Sunday after firefighters put out a fire in his home at 27 Rita Lane in Belchertown.

2

CAROL LOLLIS

Holly Bowser, left, comforts her friend Theresa Fleurent as they sit on the trunk of her car with the few items they collected Sunday afternoon after a fire at Fleurent’s home on Rita Lane in Belchertown.

3

CAROL LOLLIS

Robert Kosior stands in the yard of his house at 27 Rita Lane in Belchertown as he talks about Sunday’s fire.

BELCHERTOWN - A fire Sunday afternoon heavily damaged a home at 16 Rita Lane, displacing a family of three and their four dogs.

Theresa Fleurent said she and her husband, Richard Fleurent, were out shopping for cell phones when they received a call that their house was on fire, and they rushed back.

"The only thing I could do was worry about the dogs," Fleurent said.

The dogs - Sherlock, Sydney, Sasha and Bella - escaped the blaze and were found unhurt outside.

The fire forced the Fleurents and Theresa Fleurent's son, Robert Kosior, 33, to stay with relatives and friends Sunday night.

Nobody was home at the one-story ranch house when the fire broke out around 1 p.m., according to Belchertown Fire Chief Ted Bock. He said the fire all but destroyed the house.

Bock said the fire appeared to be accidental and seemed to have started in the kitchen, although the exact cause was not known Sunday.

At her home loading a few belongings into a car Sunday night, Theresa Fleurent, 52, said nearly everything in the house was "totally gone."

"Everything just melted into the ground," she said.

Fleurent works for the town of Amherst handling payroll and benefits. Richard Fleurent, 47, is a custodian for the town of Belchertown.

Theresa Fleurent said she managed to bring a few knickknacks out of the house after the fire was put out, but that some of her favorite possessions, including antique pieces made of silver and glass, were lost. "They just disintegrated," she said.

Also destroyed were some Christmas presents Fleurent had bought. Inside, she said, she'd found a burned piece of a shirt she'd gotten for her father.

Next-door neighbor Lee Betters said he smelled the fire and, aware the family had four dogs, rushed over and pushed open a door. The smoke was already too thick to get inside, he said. As it turned out, though, the dogs must have had already gotten out through a dog door, Betters said.

Bock said a 911 call from a neighbor reporting the fire came in at 1:07 p.m.

When firefighters reached the house, there was "pretty heavy fire coming out of the roof and from the kitchen area," Bock said.

One firefighter suffered either a broken foot or broken ankle when he fell on an icy patch on the front step, Bock said; the firefighter was treated and released at Mary Lane Hospital in Ware.

By late afternoon, after firefighters had left the house, Fleurent and a friend, Holly Bowser, were inside trying to see if anything could be salvaged.

Outside, Robert Kosior, Fleurent's son, carried an armful of his belongings out to his car. He'd been at work at Balise Hyundai in Springfield, he said, when the fire broke out.

"We have lots of family," Kosior said when asked where the three would find shelter. Despite the loss, he said, they would "keep a good attitude."

Later, as the late-afternoon light was fading and she and her husband were getting ready to leave for her father's house in Hadley, Theresa Fleurent said she was feeling "very cold and very tired." Her house behind her was completely dark.

"I've never seen anything disappear like that," she said. "It's just gone."